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HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS OF 
NEW ENGLAND 



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The juh story 



HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 

OF 

NEW ENGLAND 



r 




INCLUDING THE STATES OF 

MASSACHUSETTS 

NEW HAMPSHIRE 

RHODE ISLAND 

CONNECTICUT 

VERMONT 

AND 

MAINE 




WRITTEN AND ' 
ILLUSTRATED BY 

CLIFTON JOHNSON 

U 1 




Published by THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

New York McMxr 

LONDON: MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED 






Copyright, igij 

by the Macmillan Company. 



Set up and electrotyped 
Published November, 191 5 



AMERICAN' 
HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 



NEW ENGLAND 



#^ 



NOV W |9ih 

Electrotyped '^'*^ 

by the 

F. A. Bassette Company 
Springfield, Mass. 






Contents 



I. In the Maine Woods . 

II. Artemus Ward's Town 

III. June In the White Mountains 

IV. A New Hampshire Paradise 

V. On the Shores of Lake Champlain 

VI. The Village of the Seven Taverns 

VII. August in the Berkshire Hills 

VIII. The Port of the Fishermen . 

IX. The Land of the Minute Men 

X. Autumn on Cape Cod 

XI. Nantucket Days 

XII. Along Shore in Rhode Island 

XIIL Old Put's Country 

XIV. Shad Time on the Connecticut 

XV. Glimpses of Life 



Page 

I 

29 

49 

73 
88 

108 

133 

iSS 
172 
18S 
199 
225 
241 

255 
282 



Illustrations 



The Fish Story 








Frontispiece 


FACING PAGE 


The Indian Island Ferry . . . . . 7 


Ready for Game 










14. 


Breakfast Preparations . 










22 ( 


Artemus Ward's Old Home 










29 


The Village School 










32 


A Vernal Roadway 










43 


The Flume 










50 ■ 


The Old Tip-top House . 










59 


The Presidential Range from Bretton Woods 




66 


The Toll-gate at the Entrance to the Bridge 




75 


The Fisherman ..... 




82 . 


Old-time Natives . 








87 


The Waterside — Lake Champlain 








91 


At Work in the Garden . 








98 


A Rugged Bit of Shore . 








102 ' 


Washing-day 








109 


A Colonial Pulpit . 








112 


Capturing Bees . . . 








120 


At the Door of a Country Store 








133 


A Nook Among the Hills 








139 


Harvest Time 








146 


The Foreign-looking Main Street 








155 


The Harbor . 










162 



Illustrations 



Cleaning Fish 






167 


The Lexington Minute Man .... 


172 


Where the Battle Was Fought at Concord Bridge 


177 


Old Stone Fences that Served to Shelter the Attacking 


y 

3 


Farmers ...... 


182 


A Relic of Earlier Days . 






187 


Earning His Living 






190 


A Glimpse of Provincetown 






194 


A Nantucket Harbor Nook 






203 


A Cobble-paved Lane 






210 


The Old Windmill . 






219 


The Seaward View from King Philip' 


s Seal 


; 


226 


At the Edge of the Water 






231 


Noon ..... 






235 


Making a Rug 






242 


The Wolf Den 






246 


Schoolboys .... 






251 


Low Tide .... 






258 


Comparing Fish 






267 


Shad Time on the Connecticut 






274 


After Dandelion Greens . 






282 


Getting in Hay 






285 


On the Border of the Lake 






288 


One of the Old Folks at Home 






291 



Introductory Note 

All the volumes in this series are chiefly concerned 
with country life, especially that which is typical and 
picturesque. To the traveller, no life is more interest- 
ing, and yet there is none with which it is so difficult to 
get into close and unconventional contact. Ordinarily, 
we catch only casual glimpses. For this reason I have 
wandered much on rural byways, and lodged most of 
the time at village hotels or in rustic homes. My trips 
have taken me to many characteristic and famous 
regions; but always, both in text and pictures, I have 
tried to show actual life and nature and to convey some 
of the pleasure I experienced in my intimate acquain- 
tance with the people. 

These "Highways and Byways" volumes are often 

consulted by persons who are planning pleasure tours. 

To make the books more helpful for this purpose each 

chapter has a note appended containing suggestions 

for intending travellers. With the aid of these notes, 

I think the reader can readily decide what regions are 

likely to prove particularly worth visiting, and will 

know how to see such regions with the most comfort 

and facility. 

Clifton Johnson. 
Hadley, Mass. 



THIS volume includes chapters on 
characteristic, picturesque, and 
historically attractive regions in the 
states of Maine, New Hampshire, 
Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut 
and Rhode Island. The notes ap- 
pended to the chapters give valuable 
information concerning automobile 
routes and many facts and suggestions 
of interest to tourists in general. 



Highways and Byways of 
New England 

I 

IN THE MAINE WOODS 

THE lumbermen have been devastating the forest 
country around Moosehead Lake for a hun- 
dred years, yet much of it is still genuine 
wilderness. Its solitudes are frequented by big game, 
the streams are full of fish, and the lakes abound with 
waterfowl. Here and there a few faint trails wind 
through the forest, most of them of little use except 
in winter; and the rivers and lakes are the chief 
thoroughfares, just as they were in the days of the 
first explorers. Even the aborigines are not alto- 
gether lacking, for a remnant of the once powerful 
Penobscot tribe has survived, and some of its members 
continue to resort to the woods to hunt and fish and 
act as guides. 

The four hundred persons who constitute this Indian 
tribe have permanent dwellings on the borders of the 
wilderness at Oldtown, where they occupy an island 
in the river. Access to their domains Is obtained by a 



2 Highways and Byways of New England 

lumberman's bateau rowed by a swarthy Indian ferry- 
man. The island is two miles long, and the land rises 
and falls in little hills and hollows that are for the most 
part well covered with trees. It seems like a bit of 
Eden to one who has come from the busy streets and 
noisy waterside mills of Oldtown. The Indian homes 
are set helter-skelter in a somewhat close group at the 
southern end of the island. Among them is a public 
hall, a schoolhouse, and a good-sized church, but there 
are no streets or roads — only paths. Many of the 
dwellings are little one-story cabins. Others are large 
and substantial, yet always with a touch of dilapida- 
tion or incompleteness as if the owners had not the 
knack of carrying a project through to the end, or of 
retaining in good order what they once gain. The most 
imposing house of all at the time of my visit had a fine 
granite underpinning, maroon paint, and an ornate 
front door, but this door lacked a handle, and there 
were no steps to mount to It. Roofs were apt to be 
leaky, fences broken, and the few tiny garden patches 
were overflowing with weeds, while the occasional fruit 
trees were wholly unpruned and dying of neglect. 
Everywhere were signs of shiftless easy-going poverty, 
and the people loitered about chatting or dreaming. 

The state looks after them as its wards and controls 
their property, which includes considerable rentable 
land, and they have an annual income from this source 
that averages twenty dollars to each member of the 
tribe. Some of the money is reserved to care for the 



In the Maine Woods 3 

poor, and the rest is doled out in the form of orders 
for supplies. But these orders are often sold to the 
whites for half their face value, and the cash thus 
obtained is most likely spent for liquor. The sale of 
strong drink to the Indians is unlawful, but there is 
always a low grade of whites who will take the Indians' 
money, invest it in fire-water for them, and then help 
drink the stuff. 

None of the Indians are now full-blooded. They have 
Intermarried somewhat promiscuously with the whites — 
men of the French and Irish races being apparently the 
most inclined to take squaw brides. 

"As a class the Indians are unreliable," a local resi- 
dent informed me. "They attend their church pretty 
well, but it don't hold them down very much. They 
pick up things when they have a chance, and they never 
pay a debt. If one of 'em owed me, and he saw me 
comin', I'd expect him to sneak around through a back 
street. Another thing — you take an Indian in a tight 
place, or scrapping, and he's cowardly — don't show any 
sand. They ain't got the ambition of white men and 
won't work as hard. Very few of 'em can be depended 
on for steady exertion. When an Indian works long 
enough to earn a few dollars he no sooner gets his pay 
than he lays off to spend it. They take no thought 
for the morrow, and if they have something for sup- 
per they don't care whether they have any breakfast 
or not. 

"The old race was better than those of the present. 



4 Highways and Byways of New England 

There used to be a cannon on the island that they fired 
when the village men who'd been logging came down 
the river with the drive in the spring, but they hain't 
got the energy to do that now. They're bright enough, 
and there's some who go to college, but such don't fare 
any better'n the rest. The college fellow ain't been 
brought up to work, and he soon dissipates and goes to 
pieces. 

"Yes, an Indian's an Indian; but I'll say this for them 
— they've never had a fair show anywheres. Oldtown 
used to be an awful rough place, and woe betide the 
Indian who got in a little too much booze. It would 
make him pretty wild, and the lumbermen would 
'Hurrah boys!' and gather a crowd and almost massa- 
cree him. Every one knows too that the whites' treat- 
ment of the Indian girls wa'n't what it ought to be. 
Some of 'em was handsome as pictures. If a man tried 
to be familiar with 'em while they were sober they'd 
fly in his hair in a minute; but they were an easy prey 
when they were drunk. They have, if anything, more 
of an appetite for liquor than the men, and two-thirds 
of the women on the island now have served time in 
jail for drunkenness." 

The tragic element in the Indian story did not present 
itself as I rambled about their village. Life there 
seemed to be particularly placid, and I found the in- 
habitants companionable and apparently contented. 
One of the men related with evident relish how a woman 
with a camera stopped to make a picture of him while 



In the Maine Woods 5 

he was digging potatoes, and he said he asked her if she 
didn't know it was against the law to shoot wild animals 
at that season in Maine. 

From Oldtown I went by train to the southern end 
of Moosehead Lake, whence I journeyed to the other 
end, a distance of forty miles, in a little steamer. Many 
forest fires were burning, for the season had been un- 
usually dry, and the air was thick with smoke. The 
sun shone dimly through the haze from a cloudless sky, 
and as the steamer pushed onward, the land between 
the green points that we were constantly passing re- 
ceded into a vague and silvery distance. 

Our journey ended toward evening at a clearing in 
which were a small hotel and a store. Here I engaged 
a guide, Pete by name, and, with him to advise, bought 
supplies at the store for a week's canoe trip. The trip 
was to begin on a stream two miles away across a 
"carry." Pete agreed to hire a team and get his canoe 
and the supplies over the first thing in the morning, 
but I walked across that night. The road was rough 
and wholly strange to me, yet it was clear of timber for 
several rods on either side and, in spite of the moonless 
gloom, I had no difficulty in following it. 

As I trudged along I presently observed a peculiar 
glow over the landscape, and when I looked up to dis- 
cover the cause saw that the heavens were all ablaze 
with a wonderfully brilliant aurora. Splinters of light, 
some single, some gathered in great sheaves, were 
pulsating weirdly across the sky; and there were long 



6 Highways and Byways of New England 

streamers that now and then formed in a luminous, 
cloudy nucleus right overhead with plumes extending 
away in all directions, faintly colored with tints of the 
rainbow, and alternately flashing and fading. What a 
wild shimmering dance! and so silent! I unconsciously 
listened for a crash of sound, but heard nothing except 
a slight noise of dusky wings as an occasional bat sped 
past me in its erratic flight. 

At a farmhouse near the river I found lodging for 
the night. Two men were sitting on the piazza smoking 
their pipes and watching the aurora. "I've never seen 
the northern lights like this, covering the whole sky," 
one of them commented. " I bet a dollar it means some- 
thing — either storm or cold." 

After we had discussed the noiseless celestial fire- 
works for a while the other man said to me: "Your 
walk across the carry would have been kind of danger- 
ous a few weeks later. As soon as the law is off on deer 
there's the darndest rush of sports in here that ever 
you see, all wantin' to hunt, and so excited they don't 
know what they're doin'. They gather around the 
borders of the clearings waiting for the deer to come out 
to feed, and if they get sight of anything movin' they 
take for granted that it's game and shoot in a hurry. 
So in the late evening or early morning, when the light 
is dim, if you git anywhere near 'em, they most likely 
plunk you. Ain't that right Steve.'*" 

"Yes," Steve agreed. "Why, you know one time 
last year how Bob Eddy was behind a rock in the field 




K 



In the Maine Woods 7 

where we cut hay. He was watchin' for a chance at a 
deer, and so were some sports who were crawlin' around 
in the bushes on the edge of the woods. Pretty soon he 
heard a bullet sing past, and later a second and a third. 
Then he sensed what was the matter and he looked and 
saw the fellow who was shooting. Bob was mad clear 
through, and he jumped up and began swearing. He 
told the sport he had half a mind to put a bullet in him, 
and the sport took to his heels. 

"It's lucky that the sports are poor shots, for though 
they kill quite a number of men every year it's only a 
very few compared with those that are shot at. They 
get nervous and their bullets fly half a mile wide of the 
mark as like as not. But bullets ain't the only danger 
here. Bill, tell about that close call you had a couple 
of years ago down at the river." 

"Well," Bill said, "it was late in the fall and the 
river was skimmed over with thin ice. I got into my 
canoe and was breaking my way across, and it happened 
there was an old fellow standing on the other bank 
watching me. Then all of a sudden I fell in. I couldn't 
do much but cling to the ice and prevent my head from 
goin' under. The old fellow on the shore got a boat and 
started to my rescue hollerin': 'Keep cool, keep cool! 
I'm comin'!' 

"It was no trouble to keep cool in that ice-water, 
and by the time he pulled me out I was so cool that in 
about another minute I'd have lost my grip." 

At the conclusion of this narrative we went indoors. 



8 Highways and Byways of New England 

and Steve took a lamp and picked up from behind the 
hall door a cap and a cob pipe. "Those belonged to 
our fire warden," he said. "We found 'em in the river 
near where he was drowned four or five days ago. He 
and his wife were out in a canoe and they upset. In 
her fright she grabbed him around the neck and so 
kept herself above water until he sank. At the same 
time she was screaming, and their nephew who was 
hunting in the woods close by ran to see what was the 
trouble. He swam out into the stream, but he was 
foxy and wouldn't go right to her; for he was slim and 
light while she was a big heavy woman, and he knew if 
she got hold of him they'd both drown. So he swam 
to the canoe and swung it around to her. She caught 
the end of it, and he pushed her to shore. Then he 
went and dove after his uncle, but couldn't get him. 
He and his aunt came home, and she was most crazy. 
She said she had caused her husband's death, and she 
cried till her face was black as the stove. They've 
moved away now, but they lived in a little house just 
a few rods down the road." 

In the morning the air was crisp and clear and en- 
tirely free from smoke. However, Bill said this was 
merely because the wind had changed and that the 
forest fires still burned. "We don't have as bad fires 
as we used to have," he continued. "I remember one 
forty years ago, by gorry! that climbed the spruce trees 
like a race-horse. It was a damnable sight — and when 
there come a gust of wind — Lord! how that fire would 



In the Maine Woods 9 

go! But I sot a back fire along a road and kept it away 
from our place. 

"Another fire that I recollect got goin' in some timber 
land where there wa'n't a stick but pine of the very 
finest kind. The owner of the land was at our house 
when it started. He watched the black smoke rollin' 
up and offered to give Father a barrel of flour if he'd 
put the fire out. Then he went off, and Father and 
four of us boys took some pails and was on our way to 
see if we could deaden the fire by throwing on water 
when a thunderstorm come along and did the business. 
Next day Father hitched up and drove to the town 
where the man that offered him the flour had a store. 
The feller was a drefful mean critter, and he declared he 
wa'n't goin' to pay for what the rain had done. But 
his partner said: 'Let the man have the flour. He did 
what he could, and if God Almighty helped him you 
no need to complain.' " 

I remarked that I had come to the woods prepared 
for cold, rough weather, but that the present prospects 
were so bright and mild I thought I had made a mis- 
take. "Oh, no," he responded, "a wise man takes his 
coat and umbrella whether the weather is favorable or 
not. Any fool knows enough to take 'em if it's bad. 
You'll have a nice trip; but a month ago it was all a 
man's life was worth to go into the woods on account of 
the mosquitoes and flies." 

My guide arrived about the time I finished breakfast, 
and we were soon afloat on the stream — a lonely. 



lo Highways and Byways of New England 

sluggish waterway through the interminable forest. 
The steady dip of the paddles, the ripple of little waves 
along the sides of the canoe, and the swiftness with 
which we glided down the stream were all delightful. 
But the voyaging nevertheless had its flaws, for I 
presently heard Pete, who sat at the stern, grumbling 
that he had tipped over the kerosene can, and that his 
plug of tobacco had dropped into the spillings and 
tasted of the oil. 

By noon, after putting ten miles behind us, we came 
to a solitary clearing where there was a little cluster of 
buildings with a garden and a few fenced fields round- 
about. "The place belongs to Joe Smith," Pete in- 
formed me, "and he runs a sort of hotel. You'd ought 
to see him. He's got a paunch as big as a molasses 
barrel." 

We concluded to stop at Joe's for dinner, and so I 
made his acquaintance. He was a vigorous elderly 
man with bushy white hair, and as rotund as my guide 
had said, but he was far from having the fat individual's 
proverbial amiability. Indeed, he was as full of wrath 
as he could hold and was constantly scolding, and slam- 
ming nervously in and out of the house. He told the 
several persons who had gathered at his dinner table 
that this was the last day his house would be open to 
the public. 

But his housekeeper said: "Joe Is not himself this 
noon. He will feel difl"crcntly tomorrow. You needn't 
mind what he says about closing the house. It will be 



In the Maine Woods ii 

open just the same. I ain't no kid, and I'll see to that. 
But I can tell you I don't like my job. No one In this 
world has to take the redemption and going-over that 
a cook does. The trouble at present Is caused by some 
liquor that a sport give him yesterday. Joe had eleven 
drinks before breakfast." 

When we left the dinner table we heard the landlord 
shouting wrathfully on the piazza. Pete glanced out 
at him through a window and remarked: "Joe's got a 
voice like a mad bull. I s'pose he's breakin' the news 
to those two teamsters he's talkin' with." 

At that instant the fat landlord delivered a sudden 
blow with his fist that knocked one of the teamsters off 
the piazza and landed him full length on the ground. 
The man's pipe flew from his mouth, and some money 
he had In his hand was scattered all around. But he 
was not hurt and was soon on his feet. Joe stamped 
and threw a piazza chair onto the woodpile. My guide 
and I betook ourselves to the canoe, and as we went on 
we looked back up the hill from the far end of the clear- 
ing. Joe was In the yard still bellowing at the teamsters 
who were standing near a shed, and his big body and 
white shock of hair loomed on the horizon like a 
thunder-cloud. 

We now came to rapids, and a continual dodging was 
necessary to keep In the channel and avoid the numer- 
ous stones that strewed our course, both those that 
were in plain sight and those that were slightly sub- 
merged. Pete did the navigating alone, here holding 



12 Highways and Byways of New England 

back, here pushing vigorously forward, at times using 
his paddle, but in the more difficult places a "pick- 
pole." At last the voyaging became so bad that I got 
out and walked along near the stream on a grassy tote- 
road that was used in winter for transporting supplies 
to the lumber camps. I had the company of a young 
married couple who had been passengers In a canoe 
ahead of us. This canoe was propelled by the Chesun- 
cook mail-carrier who travels over a twenty-mile route, 
going up the river one day and down the next. 

As we strolled along, the man, gun in hand, kept a 
sharp watch for game. Presently he addressed me 
saying, "Your hearing isn't very good, is It?" 

I did not understand the significance of his remark 
until he went on to say: "You couldn't hear anything, 
could you, In case I should do some shooting contrary 
to law.'' Anyhow, the law's off on ducks, and I'm goin' 
to shoot If I see one sitting up In a tree, even If it does 
look like a partridge." 

After walking a mile we resumed our canoe voyage 
In dead-water that sets back from Lake Chesuncook, 
and the lake Itself presently came in sight. The day 
was now waning, and Pete selected a camping-place on 
a high bank, where were tentstakes and the charred 
remains of a fire. In a short time we had our tent up 
and a cheerful blaze crackling in front. Pete then pro- 
ceeded to boil potatoes, fry bacon and eggs, and bake 
biscuit. He did not stint In his use of materials. It 
was habitual with him to prepare more food than we 



In the Maine Woods 13 

could possibly eat and to cheerfully throw away what 
was left. Why should he economize when the expense 
was another's? He brought the canoe up the bank and 
wedged it bottom upward between two trees for a 
table. 

When supper had been disposed of we paddled across 
the lake to a tiny settlement. By the time we neared 
the landing the evening gloom had so Increased that 
we could distinguish nothing clearly along the muddy, 
snag-encumbered shore, and we were vainly trying to 
find a way to solid ground when some one appeared 
with a lantern and helped us out of our difficulties. We 
went with him up to the post office which was a room 
in the ell of his house, and we were there chatting when 
we heard shouts from the lake. The postmaster went 
out again into the night with his lantern. This time he 
returned with a guide and two young women. The 
latter were to teach school in the vicinity, one on this 
side of the lake, and the other in a similar tiny settle- 
ment on the opposite shore. They were town girls who 
had accepted the positions in part, at least, for the 
pleasure of spending a few months in the woods. Their 
only way to come and go was by canoe, and their voy- 
age that day had been pretty strenuous. The guide 
did not know the river and had got his canoe down the 
rapids by wading. Hardly was he past the worst of the 
rocks when darkness closed in on them, and they had 
an anxious time until they saw ahead the lights of the 
settlement. 



14 Highways and Byways of New England 

Pete and I presently returned to our boat and pad- 
dled across to camp. When we went to bed my guide 
drew the blankets over his head and never removed 
them till morning. I wondered that he did not smother, 
but he said he always slept that way — in winter on 
account of the cold, in summer to escape mosquitoes. 

The bruising the canoe had received on the rocks 
had set it to leaking, and Pete made repairs with paper 
and shellac. Just before starting he "killed" our fire 
by pouring water onto the embers so that it could by 
no chance spread Into the woodland. This he did every- 
where we built a fire, whether at our night camping- 
place, or where we stopped for our noon lunch. The 
precaution was taken not entirely out of regard for the 
forest, but from a wholesome fear of the wardens, who, 
if they discovered a neglected campfire of his, even If 
he had only left It Intending to come back in five 
minutes, would take away his license as a guide and 
send him out of the woods. 

For several miles we journeyed very comfortably up 
a broad arm of the lake, and the channel came to an 
abrupt end In a floating tangle of stumps and dead trees. 
Careful search revealed indications that other boats 
had crowded and chopped a way through this debris. 
So, sometimes pausing to use our ax, sometimes stand- 
ing on the drift and tugging at the canoe, sometimes In 
the boat pushing along with our paddles we gradually 
worked our way to a muddy landing. Here was a short 
carry to a stream called the Umbazookskus. Its name 




Ready for game 



In the Maine Woods 15 

is the only big thing about it, for it is a mere brook, 
swift, crooked, and encumbered with boulders. Pete 
waded and pushed the boat before him while I tramped 
a trail in the towering unmolested forest. Often the 
path led through a sober twilight of evergreen woods 
where tresses of gray moss hung from the dead limbs. 

At length we reached Umbazookskus Lake and pad- 
dled across it to a clearing in which a summer resident 
had a log cabin. Another carry was now necessary — 
this time two miles long, but the owner of the cabin had 
no desire to have strangers linger on his premises, and 
for a moderate remuneration he was ready to supply a 
man and team to facilitate their progress to other 
regions. The conveyance on which we bestowed our- 
selves amid our belongings was a heavy logging wagon, 
and the road was deeply rutted and boggy. At inter- 
vals we splashed through pools of water, and there were 
frequent rocks over which we bumped with a violence 
calculated to addle one's brains. Now and then, too, 
we had a jig over a stretch of corduroy. 

It was a relief to embark once more, even though we 
were traversing Mud Pond, which was decidedly more 
mud than pond; for there was only a skimming of 
water with black ooze beneath. Through this we 
pushed by main force, and on arriving at the other 
shore I resumed walking while Pete waded behind the 
canoe down a brook that he said had hardly enough 
water in it to float his pick-pole. But we did not have 
far to go before reaching a marshy region where the 



i6 Highways and Byways of New England 

stream was navigable, and then we paddled along till 
we came to the broad expanse of Chamberlain Lake. 
The smoke had come on thick again, and the dim 
opposite shore seemed twenty miles away. 

Pete said it was time to camp, but when I demurred 
he agreed to push on, though with a reminder that most 
guides would not be so obliging. In particular he men- 
tioned one of the crack guides and affirmed: "If you 
had him he'd have stopped at Mud Pond, and you 
couldn't have got him to go any farther, nohow. But 
then, Dave is the balkiest man God ever made, and 
that's a fact." 

Another half dozen miles took us to the banks of the 
Allcgash, where we landed and prepared to pitch our 
tent just as the sun disappeared low in the western 
smoke. 

In the morning the smoke had once more blown off, 
and the air was keen and clear. When we started on 
our day's voyaging we turned southward and sped 
swiftly along urged forward by a gale of wind. Once in 
a while a little slop of water came over the side of the 
canoe from the crest of a wave. In our rear the deep 
Indigo of the lake surface dappled with whitecaps and 
streaked with foam looked positively ugly. The canoe 
made long leaps down the Incline of each successive 
wave, and the experience was very exhilarating — per- 
haps the more so for Its spice of danger. 

About a dozen miles from our starting-point we 
escaped the worst of the wind by passing through a 



In the Maine Woods 17 

broad outlet into little Lake Telosmic, and we kept 
steadily on until we camped at the far end of Webster 
Lake for the night. 

As I was gathering driftwood for our fire that evening 
I heard a splashing in the water a quarter of a mile 
distant, and when I looked In that direction I saw a 
cow moose standing knee-deep In the lake eating water- 
weeds. I ran along through the woods near the shore 
until I came opposite the animal. She was now only a 
few rods away, yet for a time was quite undisturbed 
by my presence. At length, however, she seemed to 
scent me, and threw her ears Intently forward and gazed 
doubtfully toward the shrubbery behind which I was 
concealed. Then she leisurely swung around, and with 
many pauses straddled off on her long ungainly legs 
Into the woods. What a caricature she was with her 
humped back and broad-nosed, big-lipped face! 

I saw two other moose during my trip, but their 
tracks were common along the shores of the streams and 
lakes — great ox-like imprints, and with them the 
dainty hoof-marks of the deer. I often had glimpses of 
the latter creatures — flashes of brown disappearing 
among the trees, and on the night we spent at Webster 
Lake I heard a deer close by our camp "blowing." 
Again and again the wheezing snort was repeated, 
warning all the other members of the clan of appre- 
hended danger. I lifted the lower border of the tent 
and looked out. The deer was hardly a dozen feet 
away, and a half moon shone, but amid the darkling 



1 8 Highways and Byways of New England 

shadows of the forest it was effectually hidden. Soon 
it went oif, now and then nipping at a twig as it moved 
along. 

Near by was a big dam that the lumbermen used in 
controlling the water to float their spring drives of logs 
out of the wilderness. In the early morning Pete 
resorted to the dam to catch some trout for breakfast. 
A stick a few feet long that he picked up on the shore 
served for a pole, and a piece of red string for a line. 
He had some good flies which It was his habit to carry 
twined Into the ribbon of his hat, and he fastened one 
of them to the string. The trout seemed more Inclined 
to bite at that gay string than to snap at the fly, but 
he caught two, and the larger one weighed about a 
pound. We had all we could eat, and yet Pete seemed 
a little surprised when I remarked that It would have 
been a pity to catch any more. He assured me that 
most visitors to the woods are seldom considerate 
either of the fish or of the Interests of other persons who 
find pleasure In angling. The future Is nothing to them, 
and they disregard the game laws whenever they think 
they can do so without getting into trouble. They 
catch fish for the pride of numbers and pounds of 
weight, and when they have taken their prey to camp 
and gloated over it they throw most of it away. Truly, 
they are "sports" as the guides call them and not 
genuine sportsmen. 

We started promptly right after breakfast, and Pete 
went off alone to "snub" down the quick water of 



In the Maine Woods lo 

Webster Stream, standing in the stern of the canoe, 
pick-pole in hand, ready for all emergencies. I tramped 
along a loggers' road which furnished a short cut to the 
next lake, and was soon out of sight and hearing of the 
stream. Once I crossed a burnt tract where the trees 
were all dead and blackened and the ground was strewn 
with charred trunks and fragments, but for the most 
part my way led through the thick green forest which 
apparently had never been devastated by either fire or 
axes. 

When I reached the next lake I sat down to wait for 
Pete. An hour passed, then two hours, and still he did 
not come. Finally, a good deal perturbed, I started to 
follow up the stream in search of him. I wondered 
what I would do if thrown on my own resources, with- 
out food or shelter, and separated from the nearest 
habitation by twenty miles of rough forest. As hastily 
as possible I made my way along, sometimes on the 
loose stones at the borders of the channel, sometimes 
through the mud and brush on the banks. The water 
fretted its noisy way down the ravine, and on either 
side rose the silent woods, and the region seemed as 
devoid of human life as if mankind had never penetrated 
its sylvan wilds. But at last I was rejoiced, on turning 
a bend, to see Pete poling down the rocky torrent. I 
waved my hands and shouted a greeting. He, however, 
did not respond, and when the canoe crunched up on 
the pebbly shore near me he looked very sober. 

"I've had hard luck," he said. 



20 Highways and Byways of New England 

While searching for a place to land above a fall, 
around which he would have to carry, his canoe had got 
caught between two rocks in a swift current, and the 
bow had tipped down, and let in a deluge of water. At 
once his cargo was set adrift. He contrived to rescue 
some of the goods, but lost nearly all the food and 
tableware. Our flour was gone and our cornmeal— no 
more biscuits or pancakes or Johnnycake 1 The potatoes 
had disappeared and the eggs. No spoons or forks 
remained, and no knives except my tiny pocketknife 
and a sheath knife Pete carried at his side. He be- 
moaned with especial fervor the loss of his tobacco. 
The shellac and tacks with which he repaired his canoe 
were missing, and, worst of all, our matches had got 
soaked so that we could not kindle a fire. 

After lunching on a few half wet crackers spread with 
butter, Pete went on down the shallow rapids. He 
took me in when we reached the lake, and we paddled 
Its full length and entered the outlet — a crooked dead- 
water through a swamp. Low In the west the sun 
shone serenely from a sky that held not a single cloud. 
There was no wind, and the stumps and dead trees on 
the banks were perfectly mirrored in the water. We 
seemed to be afloat on liquid glass. Ducks abounded, 
and when a flock flew past us Pete lifted his paddle and 
took aim with it as if it was a gun. " Bang ! " he shouted, 
and added, "I wish I had one of you fellers for my 
supper." 

Presently we came to a large pond and began to look 



In the Maine Woods 21 

for a camping-place. We saw several promising spots, 
but so far from the water across oozy flats of mud that 
it was impossible to approach them. When we reached 
the extreme end of the pond we were much disappointed 
to find that what we supposed was the channel tapered 
down to nothing. On ahead were snaggy masses of 
drift — broken tree-trunks and uprooted stumps that 
the wind had driven in high water onto the marshy 
lowlands. The sun had set, and the twilight gloom was 
deepening. It was too late to turn back, and we were 
obliged to disembark and pick a gingerly way along on 
the drift, carrying our blankets and a few other necessa- 
ries an eighth of a mile to solid ground. The journey 
was a precarious one, for the snags were thrown together 
in a chaotic tangle that necessitated much zigzagging 
and climbing. A misstep meant going knee deep in the 
black bog. Our pilgrimage ended in an old tote-road 
where we felt around in the dusk, cleared a space of 
sticks and stones, and spread our partially soaked 
blankets. Then we supped on the watery crackers, 
with a little maple syrup that had survived the wreck 
for sauce. We had nothing at all to drink because the 
water of the pond was too dubious for such use. 

Our situation, lost in the wilderness without tent or 
fire, was anything but cheerful, and I could not help 
feeling some anxiety. Pete, however, spent the night 
under the blankets as equably as usual. I napped now 
and then, but was often awake watching the stars and 
the half moon that rose in the east and slowly climbed 



22 Highways and Byways of New England 

the heavens. At last the stars paled with the coming 
dawn, and I crawled out. My hair was wet with dew, 
and the air was damp and chilling. I roused Pete, 
who got up shivering and wrapped a blanket around 
himself. Then we sat down and shared our last six 
crackers. 

There were no inducements for lingering, and we 
packed up and started back to the canoe. The journey 
was even more difficult than it had been the night 
before, for the track on which we had to walk was 
slippery with frost. We hastily embarked and applied 
ourselves to a vigorous use of the paddles in order to 
get warm. After careful search we discovered that not 
far from the other end of the pond the true channel 
made a sudden turn which we had failed to observe on 
the evening previous. 

In a short time we reached Grand Lake, and saw at 
a distance a canoe crossing our path. By putting forth 
all our strength we came within hail soon after it reached 
land and just as its three occupants were starting to- 
ward the neighboring mountains for a day's hunting. 
They advised us about our route and gave us some 
matches, and we went on our way. At the outlet of 
the lake, after navigating a series of rapids, we came to 
five or six miles of the most entrancing travel we had 
experienced. The water was very swift, sometimes 
slipping along smoothly, sometimes breaking into 
rippling shallows where we had to choose our course 
carefully and dodge among the slightly submerged 




Breakfast preparations 



In the Maine Woods 23 

boulders. It was the perfection of motion — that slide 
down hill on the clear water. 

We were hemmed In by wooded shores where were 
evergreens and birches, mingled with maples that were 
beginning to flash with autumn gold and scarlet. The 
kingfishers were always flitting from bank to bank, and 
we saw two or three great long-legged cranes go flapping 
away. Once we heard a strange keen cry repeated 
again and again, and were puzzled to know what crea- 
ture produced it. Then an enormous, broad-winged 
bird sprang up from the weeds on the bank near which 
we were speeding and lit on a stump. It was a bald- 
headed eagle. After an inquiring look or two it flapped 
down into the undergrowth and resumed its squawking. 

Late in the forenoon we came to so rough a passage 
that I resorted to a footpath, while Pete shot down a 
succession of little ledges that have the name of Stair 
Falls. Not far beyond was the first of the Grand Falls 
where a carry was plainly necessary. Just above it we 
unloaded and drew out the canoe, and spread the things 
wet in yesterday's wreck to dry in the warm sunshine. 
Pete started a fire, and we looked over our remaining 
eatables which consisted of a chunk of pork, another of 
bacon, a little butter and tea, and a can each of pine- 
apple, beans, and succotash. We decided to dine on the 
beans, and as Pete had left his hunting-knife somewhere 
during the morning we opened the can with his ax and 
hammer. For spoons we used the covers of two tin 
boxes. 



24 Highways and Byways of New England 

There was a bad tear in the canvas of the canoe, and 
Pete found a piece of cedar in the driftwood, cut out 
some pegs with my knife, and using his awl and hammer 
mended the break. Then he heated some lumps of tar 
which he pulled from an old bateau stranded on the 
shore, and applied the sticky stuff to the edges of the 
tear and other weak spots. 

By and by we packed up and lugged our truck down 
to quieter water. One fall succeeded another with 
short stretches of paddling between, and we had a 
toilsome afternoon. Pete had an especially hard task 
carrying the canoe balanced on his head and shoulders 
along the rocky, brushy path, and when we came to 
the fourth fall he decided to launch the canoe just 
below the worst of the drop and shoot the rest of the 
way. The stream here narrowed to a wild rush of 
tangled currents and foaming waves between steep, 
ragged cliffs. I was loth to have him undertake the 
boisterous voyage; but he was not to be deterred, and 
after putting a rock in the bow for ballast he started, 
leaving the baggage on the bank. To see that frail 
boat contending with the torrent, dashed this way and 
that, and making frenzied leaps of half its length amid 
the foam was enough to cause a man's hair to stand on 
end. 

However, It went through safely, and we got our 
things into it and once more went sliding along on the 
gentle but swift declivities of the stream until we came 
to the fifth fall. Here, on a low, rocky outjut of the 



In the Maine Woods 25 

shore in a little group of pines and birches, we found 
an idyllic stopping-place for the night. We picked up 
some dry sticks, pulled a few loose shreds of bark from 
a big birch for kindling, and soon had a fire brightly 
blazing. Next we got the tent up, spread our bedding 
beneath it on a carpet of pine needles, and then supped 
on succotash and bacon with a dessert of pineapple. 
Later we lay by the fire for a while, enjoying the cozi- 
ness of our retreat, but retired early to bed with the 
music of the waterfall to lull us to sleep. 

In the morning, after breakfast, Pete investigated 
the watery declivity below us and concluded he could 
navigate it. So he loaded the canoe and started, and I 
watched his swift course down the rude torrent. Sud- 
denly the canoe hit some obstruction, swerved around 
sidewise on the verge of a ledge and went over bottom 
upward. It disappeared and Pete with it in the tum- 
bled and frothy waters, and I had doubts if I should 
ever see him again alive and whole. 

With all haste I ran along the dew-wet path In the 
alder bushes till I came opposite the scene of the 
catastrophe. Happily Pete had survived, and there he 
was out In mid-river on a submerged boulder turning 
his canoe right side up. That done, he waded to shore 
with it. His hat was gone and all of our belongings that 
had been in the boat except the pick-pole and tent. He 
at once got Into the canoe and went in pursuit of the 
missing things, most of which he recovered along the 
borders of a pebbly Island below the fall. Our worst 



26 Highways and Byways of New England 

losses were the bag of cooking utensils, the ax and ham- 
mer, and the tin cup and sponge we used for bailing. 

On the bank, near where I rejoined Pete, was a little 
shack, such as is found at frequent intervals on these 
forest streams, built for shelter by the watchers of the 
spring log drives. It was mainly of bark with a bed of 
twigs inside. Pete's teeth were chattering, and in order 
to warm and dry himself he set fire to the shack. I 
furnished the matches, for I had taken the precaution 
to carry in my pocket some of those we had been given the 
previous day. Pete began to get off his outer garments 
and was hanging them to dry before the crackling 
flames when we were startled by two sharp explosions 
from the fire which roused the echoes in the quiet valley. 

I promptly made a dash for the big timber, and Pete 
came close behind. Our alarm had been occasioned by 
a couple of dynamite caps, but we were by no means 
certain that an explosion of dynamite itself would not 
follow and blow us out of existence. However, we 
gradually recovered from our fears and returned to 
the fire. By and by Pete put on the dryest of his gar- 
ments and my coat, and we resumed our voyaging. 
Then came many miles of beautiful canoeing in the 
perfect calm of a sunny September morning between 
shores where the trees and undergrowth were almost 
tropical in their dense rank masses of foliage, and on a 
stream whose strong gliding current carried us with 
swift ease down its never-ending incline. 

Pete wound a blue handkerchief around his head to 



In the Maine Woods 27 

take the place of his lost hat, and he removed his shoes 
and stockings to let them dry a little. But that gave 
the flies a chance at him, and he complained that they 
would "chew a man's leg off." 

Toward noon we came to a dwelling on a knoll in a 
clearing. We landed and found two men in charge of 
the place, which served in a small way for a loggers' 
camp and a shelter for sportsmen. They supplied us 
with a few biscuits and doughnuts and a tin cup full of 
beans. These things enabled us to make our lunch that 
day a feast. 

By evening we reached the railroad and the end of 
our voyage, and I went on by train to a populous mill 
village. But though I had parted from my guide and 
was a score of miles from the wilderness of the loggers 
and hunters, the civilization even there seemed not 
wholly secure. For about midnight I was startled by a 
terrific bellowing close at hand outside of the hotel. 
I wondered what sort of a barbaric demon had invaded 
the town, and I crept to the window to look out. The 
creature seemed to be just around the corner of an 
adjacent building. All the dogs in the place had begun 
to bark, lights were appearing, and voices were inquir- 
ing what was the matter. The bellowing continued at 
intervals, and two of the hotel maids and a man servant 
who were on the back porch seemed to think the animal 
was an expiring cow. "Do something, Willy," the 
girls urged. "Don't let the poor cow die without trying 
to help her." 




ylrtemus ICarcrs old home 



II 



ARTEMUS WARD S TOWN 



IT is always interesting to consider what effect 
environment has in the development of those 
whom the world honors. Were the home surround- 
ings a stimulus or a handicap? What kind of people 
were the relatives, friends, and neighbors? What 
influence did nature exert?" 

I was curious to see Waterford, Maine, the birthplace 
and boyhood home of Charles Farrar Browne, better 
known as Artemus Ward, to get answers to just such 
questions, and I had the feeling that I ought to discover 
in the inhabitants and region something to account 
for the peculiar qualities of his humor. The town is 
about fifty miles north of Portland, and a half dozen 
miles from the nearest railway station. I arrived at 
this station one morning in early October and went on 
by stage to Waterford. The air was briskly cool, the 
sky serenely blue, and the sun shown without a cloud 
to interrupt its clear rays. There had been frosts, but 
the crickets and grasshoppers still chirped and fiddled, 
though not with the full vigor of the late summer. 

For much of the distance the road was through wood- 
land gay with autumn color. Some green leafage still 
lingered, but for the most part the tints were of yellow 



30 Highways and Byways of New England 

and red, varying from delicate creamy tones to vigorous 
browns and flaming scarlets. The wind was blowing 
and making faint, mysterious music on its forest harp 
and here and there loosening a leaf and sending it 
rustling down into the undergrowth. At intervals 
along the streams were rude little sawmills, and in spite 
of the fact that the country has been long settled it 
retains something of raw wildness. 

There are several Waterfords — North, South, and 
East, and Waterford Flat. The last was the village of 
Artemus Ward. Its name sounds unpromising, but 
in its immediate neighborhood the region, which for 
the most part is rather monotonous, crumples up into 
a rugged picturesqueness that has real charm, and that 
seems very well calculated to nurture a genius. Lakes, 
ponds, and streams abound, and one of these streams 
known as Crooked River runs eighteen miles in its 
erratic course across the nine mile width of the town. 
It afforded just the kind of navigation to draw volumes 
of profanity from the old-time raftsmen. 

Waterford Flat is a nook among the hills fronting on 
a body of water which is called Keoka Lake, but which 
formerly had the more vigorously natural name of 
Tom Pond. The latter name was acquired away back 
in the days when Paugus, the chief of an Indian tribe 
in the vicinity, made himself a terror on the frontiers. 
He and his followers committed so many depredations 
that Massachusetts offered a bounty of one hundred 
pounds for every Indian scalp. Captain Lovewell led 



Artemus Ward's Town 31 

an expedition against Paugus in the spring of 1725, 
but was attacked by the Indians and only fourteen out 
of thirty-four in the English party survived to return 
to their friends. One of these was Thomas Chamber- 
lain, who, after killing Paugus In the fight, saved his 
own life by swimming across the pond at Waterford 
and hiding under a shelving rock on its borders. This 
episode gave the pond its early name, and the shore 
where he hid Is still called Tom Rock Beach. 

One of the wooded hills back of the village is known 
as Mount Tirem, a name supposed to have originated 
with some Indians, who, in speaking to the early settlers 
of climbing its steep sides, said, "Tire 'em Injuns." 
Another height Is Bald Pate, so called by the pioneers 
because its top was then entirely denuded of trees, the 
result of a fire that had recently swept it. Loftiest of 
all is Bear Mountain, which owes its name to the 
killing of a bear that attempted to swim across Tom 
Pond from its base. 

Waterford village is a comfortable, sleepy little place 
whose homes cluster around a small, tree-shadowed 
common. The houses are nearly all wooden, are painted 
white, and have green blinds. It supports two stores 
and a church. At one end of the common is a sign- 
board, which reads, "10 Miles to Norway." Other 
places roundabout are Sweden, Denmark, Poland, Paris, 
and Naples. Do not these names indicate a sense of 
humor In the original settlers of the wilderness ? Water- 
ford itself has a Punkin Street, and what is now Fern 



32 Highways and Byways of New England 

Avenue was formerly Skunk Alley, and there is an 
outlying district called Blackguard which took its 
name from the character of the people who used to live 
there. 

I found the village delightful in its quiet serenity, 
and it was particularly appealing in the evening when 
the cows were driven from the outlying pastures to their 
home stables and came pacing along under the elms of 
the common, while the cowbells hung on their necks 
gave forth a dull-toned melody. It was a much livelier 
place when Artemus Ward was born there in 1834. 
Many emigrants passed through it then on their way 
to the West, and the stages were crowded with pas- 
sengers in pursuit of business or pleasure. The hotels 
presented an especially busy scene on the arrival of the 
stages, and the several stores had a large trade in 
furnishing supplies to lumbermen. One of these stores 
was kept by Artemus Ward's father, who died in 1847. 

For general information about the region I inter- 
viewed my hotel landlord. "Raising sweet corn for 
canning is one of our principal industries," he said. 
"The farmers pick the ears off and then cut the corn 
green and put it into silos. They run quite heavy 
dairies, and a man goes round gatherin' the cream 
twice a week and brings it to the creamery. 

"You'll find every farmer raisin' anywhere from an 
acre to fifteen acres of sweet corn. They commence 
pickin' along the 25th of August. The ears are carried 
right to the corn shops, and the help is there to handle 



Artemus Ward's Town 33 

it. They'll husk a load in a few minutes. The pay is 
five cents a bushel. Husking comes pretty rough on 
your wrists. After you'd husked all day possibly you 
wouldn't feel very much like husking the next morning. 
There are men who can husk out sixty-five bushels In 
a day, but I tell you they've got to keep pretty busy to 
do that. 

"Men will quit a good payin' job to go to work in a 
corn shop. Yes, sure they will. They earn considerable 
for what they do, but the net returns are small because 
there are so many shutdowns. When the last ear of a 
lot of corn Is husked they may have to wait two hours, 
without pay, for the next lot; and if there's no corn to 
husk there's none to pack, and things come to a stand- 
still all along the line. But lots of people don't like to 
work. You know that, don't you.'* Every one around 
here wants to go into the corn shops when they start 
up. It's a fascinating job. The shop is a busy Interest- 
ing place to go Into. A hundred or more persons may 
be working there together, and they can have a dickens 
of a good time while they're waiting when there's noth- 
ing to do. 

"Perhaps the corn shops are a good thing, but I 
can't see 'em In that light. I think they're a complete 
cuss to the country on account of the way they run up 
wages. You can't hire men on your farm short of 
thirty-five or forty-five dollars a month and board, 
and the worst of it Is they're so blamed Independent. 
If I hire a man I want him when I want him, but it's 



34 Highways and Byways of New England 

got so that he's more the boss than you are yourself. 
Go to giving him orders, or criticize him, and he quits. 
I paid a man two dollars a day this summer, and he set 
down half the time. I was up at five o'clock. He'd get 
out at quarter past six. I had my own work to do and 
I couldn't chase around to see whether he was doing 
his work. 

"We've got an all-fired big crop of apples here this 
year, but I only have a small orchard, and probably my 
apples won't fill more'n seventy or eighty barrels. I've 
just sold 'em for thirty-five cents a barrel on the trees. 
That don't look like much of a price, but, by gorry! I 
think I hit the mark better'n the feller who bought 
'em." 

Early in my stay I visited South Waterford where 
Artemus Ward and his near relatives lie buried in the 
pleasant Elm Vale Cemetery. Their names are spelled 
Brown on the stones, but Artemus in later life wrote his 
name Browne out of deference to an old English family 
from which his own was descended. 

I met the elderly caretaker of the cemetery, and 
when he found that I was seeking information he began 
to tell me some of his troubles with a picturesqueness 
that seemed to me worthy of the region that produced 
the famous humorist. 

"There was a photographer here in the summer," he 
said, "and the feller took soap and water and scrubbed 
the moss and stains off from a few of the gravestones 
that he wanted to make pictures of. Pretty soon after- 



Artemus Ward's Town 35 

ward a man who spends his vacations In the town come 
to the cemetery, and he see that the gravestones of 
some of his ancestors had been cleaned. So he pitched 
Into me. He's cranky by nature, and he accused me of 
doing what that photographer had done. I told him 
I didn't do it, but he said, 'You don't look to me as if 
you was telHn' the truth.' 

"Why, he was real impudent, and he was goin' to 
have the law on me. I says to him: 'You have to find 
a man guilty before you sentence him to death. You're 
crazy anyway, and it kind o' seems to me you're talking 
a little too much with your mouth.' 

"'Well,' he says, 'whoever scrubbed those grave- 
stones was a blackguard and a vandal, and you're 
responsible as the caretaker of this cemetery.' 

"'The town don't pay me to watch this cemetery 
night and day,' I told him, 'and I won't stand here and 
listen to too much of your lip.' 

"Oh, he don't amount to nothing, but his wife has 
money — lots of it. He can't do much domineering at 
home because she'd call him right down. 

"'I hope you'll go out of this place and stay a while 
and give us a little rest,' I says to him. 

"'Before I go,' he says, 'I'm goin' to see that you 
don't work here any more.' 

"Tm much obliged to you,' I says. 'I been wantin' 
to get rid of the job for two years. I wish you would 
have me discharged, but don't be too sure about it 
because probably your influence ain't very great.' 



36 Highways and Byways of New England 

"That only made him madder, and he went on 
tellin' me what he thought of me till I said: 'You see 
this grave I'm diggin'. If you don't stop your talk I'll 
lay you in this hole and put cement on top. I don't 
s'pose I'll get any pay for buryin' you, but I'll do it 
free gratis, if you don't clear out.' 

"He went away then." 

Artemus Ward died in 1867, which is not so long ago 
but that people can be found in his home region who 
remember him distinctly. One of the village women 
said to me: "The place has not changed a great deal 
since he was a boy here. It is about the same size, 
there is the same white church, and many of the same 
houses stand around the common. The old 'Brown 
house' where Charles was born burned in 1871, but 
'Aunt Car'line,' as his mother was called in Waterford, 
had long before moved to what had been her father's 
house. That is here yet, a substantial, two-story build- 
ing on the borders of the common, and it is still owned 
in the family. 

"Mrs. Brown had four children, but only Charles 
and Cyrus grew to manhood. Charles was her favorite, 
I think. Cyrus, who was about seven years older than 
Charles, became a newspaper man and was successful. 
We considered him the smarter man of the two, but he 
didn't happen to strike it so lucky. I remember he was 
at home here sick abed when I was a schoolgirl. The 
village schoolhouse was just beyond a brook at the 
north end of the common. It was an old weatherbeaten 



Artemus Ward's Town 37 

building that at some time had been painted white, 
but not much of the paint was left. Inside were 
primitive box desks, much hand-carved. The teacher's 
desk was on a platform, and its sides were boarded up 
like a pulpit. 

"The children came in from the farms and filled the 
schoolhouse. They were of all sizes from five up to 
twenty when the big boys attended in the winter. 
Then we had a lyceum with debates and a paper mostly 
made up of local hits that was regularly prepared. It 
came my turn to edit the paper, and Cyrus sent word 
to have me come to see him and he would help me write 
up some things. I was glad of his help, for I was quite 
a little girl to be the editress. The matter we wrote 
together was humorous, but I don't know now just 
what it was about. 

"After Charles had left Waterford and become 
famous he usually returned every year to spend the 
summer with his mother. He wasn't very strong. He 
was tubercular. His hands were whiter than any 
woman's, almost. They were small and long, and I 
recall hearing my father say that Charles couldn't wear 
bracelets because his wrists were as large as his hands, 
and the bracelets would slip off. Father and he were 
great cronies. They were own cousins and were said 
to look alike. 

"Charles was always funny, even In his ordinary 
talk. He bought a house near New York at Yonkers 
and Invited his mother to go to visit him. 



38 Highways and Byways of New England 

"'Charlie,' she said, 'if I do go sometime how shall 
I know your house?' 

"'Oh, you'll know it by the cupola and the mortgage 
that are on it,' he told her. 

"'Well, I'll never stop in the house if there's a mort- 
gage on it,' she declared. 

"When he got to be well-known as a lecturer he had 
full houses and a large income, and he would carry a 
good deal of money about with him. But he spent it 
freely. Being lionized as he was he had to live up to 
his reputation. He owned considerable jewelry. For 
one thing there was a very beautiful gold chain which 
had been given him by the miners in California. It 
was so heavy that he said he only wore it in the after- 
noon. That was his funny way of speaking." 

Another contemporary of Artemus Ward's whom I 
met was a stooping, elderly village man who walked 
with a cane. I called at his house in the evening, and 
I called early because I had been told that he "went 
to bed with the chickens." We sat in his kitchen in the 
gradually increasing dusk. 

"Yes, I knew Charles Brown," he said, "and I 
helped lower him into the ground. His body was 
brought from England about the beginning of June in 
a metallic casket all sealed and soldered up. The 
casket was cut open at his mother's request, and we 
see it was Charles inside. There was a funeral at the 
house attended by a few of the neighbors, and then we 
went to the cemetery at South Waterford. We didn't 



Artemus Ward's Town 39 

have a hearse, but used a two-seated spring wagon, as 
was the custom here. By taking out the seats room 
was made for the box, and the driver would sit up on 
that. The others went in their own teams. 

"I don't know much about Charles as a boy except 
that he didn't take to farming at all. He never han- 
kered after manual labor, and when he come here on his 
summer visits the lazy critter didn't do nothin' but 
have a good time. He'd lay around on the grass or go 
to ride or do anything he see fit. It was kind of a 
restful vacation, I should call it, but after he went into 
the show business I guess he may have worked some 
getting ready for the winter campaign. He was a 
bright, witty feller — no mistake about that. He had a 
vein of wit that all the Browns had. Cyrus, his brother, 
was pretty cute, too. 

"To get from here back to New York Charles would 
drive eleven miles to the railroad and go by train down 
to Portland where he'd take the boat for Boston. 
Once he was going on board the boat after he'd been 
having a little too festive a time, and he ran down the 
gang plank and across the deck and threw up over the 
rail. When he'd relieved himself he said to those that 
were with him, 'It always makes me sick to be on ship- 
board.' 

"Another time he went onto the boat in the evening 
just before the time for it to start. He'd been eating 
hearty and celebrating some with his friends, and he 
went right to bed in his stateroom. The next morning, 



40 Highways and Byways of New England 

just after he woke up, a man who was travelHng with 
him asked him how he'd slept. 

"'Not very well,' he said. 'I'm always sick goin' 
around Cape Elizabeth.' 

"But the boat hadn't left the dock on account of 
the weather being rough. 

"Charles was a poor sick feller when he left here to 
go to England, and he hadn't ought to have made such 
a trip. That wound him up in the show business. 

"We thought he'd leave considerable property, and 
he did will away a good deal, but nobody could find it. 
Well, there were roughish fellers in those days same as 
now. They'd steal the eyes out of your head if they 
could. 

"The trouble with both Charles and Cyrus was that 
they drank. Whiskey ruined 'em. That was what 
was the matter with 'em. I tell you whiskey is good in 
some cases, but I don't believe it helped them fellers 
any. They'd have lived longer without it. 

"You'd better see Mr. Wheeler. He was raised here 
on the Flat right beside of Charles and knew him well. 
He's a feller well booked up, too, and can give some 
light on this subject." 

The next morning I found Mr. Wheeler in his barn 
getting out some barrels in preparation for apple- 
picking. 

"I ain't any chicken," he said, "and it is a long time 
since Charles Brown and I were boys together, so I 
can't remember as much about him as I wish I could. 



Artemus Ward's Town 41 

But I recall that one thing he used to do was to get up 
a circus in his folks' barn. They had an old crumple- 
horn cow that he'd dress up in great shape in blankets 
of different colors for an elephant, and he'd tell us the 
elephant's good qualities. The cow didn't like it, but 
the rest of us did. The calves and the dogs and cats 
served for other strange animals. Charles acted as 
clown, and he made a pretty good one. He had some 
assistants who were acrobats or thought they were. 

*'He was full of his fun, but there was nothing 
vicious about him. He simply liked to do things that 
would raise a laugh. At school he was always playing 
jokes on the rest of the scholars and was a terrible 
torment to them. Of course he'd get called down once 
in a while for his pranks, but the teachers liked him. 
Every one liked him all through life. 

"William Allen sat in the seat right in front of him. 
William was a good scholar, but kind of a sleepy fellow. 
He'd sit with his head bowed forward studying. Charles 
was forever dabbling with ink, and one day he took up 
his ink bottle and poured the contents down the back 
of William's neck. I saw that performance. The ink 
ran down on the floor into the cracks under the seats, 
and when I was in the old schoolhouse as much as 
twenty-five years later the stains were still there. The 
building stands yet up here side of the road, but is now 
a carpenter's shop. 

"There were fifty-six of us in the school the last 
winter I went. A man taught in winter and a woman 



42 Highways and Byways of New England 

in summer. We learned more than the children do 
now — got more practical information. I won a book 
once as a prize for spelling, and I've kept it ever since. 
The twelve or fifteen in the class would line up, and if 
one missed a word and the next one below spelled it 
right they'd change places. The best speller was at 
the head of the line most of the time, and the poorest 
at the foot. We didn't have a janitor, but did the work 
ourselves. There was a fire list of the boys, and they 
took turns making the fire; and there was a sweeping 
list of the girls, and they took turns doing the sweeping. 
When there was snow we slid down the steep hill that 
was close by, and in the warm months we'd play in the 
brook. 

"Charles wasn't out at recess tearing around with 
the other boys in their rough sports. He was different 
in his tastes from most of us, though when any fun was 
on hand in town he was generally there early and 
stayed late. We used to have school exhibitions, and 
if we acted the incident in William Tell where the apple 
was shot off the boy's head, or anything in that line, 
Charles was sure to be in it. He'd play baseball with 
us on the common, and he'd get up in the middle of 
the night to shoot off some powder and celebrate the 
Fourth of July. 

"I was out, too, firing off an old gun I had, but I 
never shot a gun at game in my life. I didn't take to 
that sort of sport, though once in a while I'd go spearing 
pickerel on the overflowed meadow in spring. That 




^ 



Artemus Ward's Town 43 

was done after dark In a boat. We'd make an iron 
basket by riveting together old wagon tires and that 
kind of thing, and put it on a stick five or six feet high 
near the bow of the boat, and light some pitch pine in 
It for a torch. One fellow would row and the other 
spear the fish. 

"When Charles was about twenty-five and was 
editing a little humorous paper called Vanity Fair in 
New York I went down there for a couple of days and 
was with him quite a little. He was a good entertainer. 
We took in the shipping wharves and the big vessels 
and Central Park and went around to the dance halls. 
One of those halls was a room sixty feet square with 
the walls all mirrors. I'd never seen anything like it 
before, and I haven't since." 

The home of the humorist's mother, now called 
"Wheelbarrow Farm," is owned by a woman relative 
who has this to say of him. "He led a gay life, I think, 
but though he sometimes drank to excess he did not 
have protracted sprees. He was tall, slim, and bony, 
and he easily assumed on the platform a manner that 
was awkward and made him appear sort of green- 
looking. But if you met him you found him genial, 
courteous, and charming, and his talk full of witty 
nonsense. I heard him lecture once, and just before 
he began my mother and I went around to speak to 
him. He insisted that we should sit on the stage. 
What he said was mostly foreign to his subject. He 
spoke anything that came Into his mind, and he was 



44 Highways and Byways of New England 

so absurd that I nearly rolled under my chair. Mother 
said she never laughed so much in her life." 

At the age of fourteen the humorist's schooldays 
ended, and he left home to make his own way In the 
world. For a time he worked In the neighboring town 
of Norway, and thither I followed on his trail. As I 
entered the town I made some inquiries of a man I 
met on the street, who responded: "Yes, Artemus 
was a devil here in a newspaper printing office. He 
learned the printing trade and contributed to the paper. 
He was a mischievous cud, you know, and when he 
went to school people thought he was a dunce and 
didn't amount to anything, but when he grew up he 
played to the crowned heads of Europe. 

"There was a rivalry between the paper here and the 
one in the neighboring town of Paris, and each one 
always bragged about any improvements It made and 
crowed over the other one. The Paris paper for one 
while seemed to be having much the most to crow 
about, and Artemus wrote this paragraph: 'A large 
improvement has been made In our office. We have 
bored a hole in the bottom of our sink and set a slop 
pail under It. What will the hell-hounds over to Paris 
think now?' 

"He was a funny fellow, Artemus Ward was. Once 
he was somewhere and got strapped. He found a man 
he knew, and said, 'If it's not too much out of place I 
wish you'd loan me some money.' 

"The man was willing and handed over what 



Artemus Ward's Town 45 

Artemus said he needed, and then asked when he'd 
pay It back. 

"'Well,' Artemus answered, 'I'll be pretty busy on 
the Resurrection Day. Let's call it the day after.' 

"If he was lecturing here in Maine he'd refer to a 
time when he 'spoke before a refined and intelligent 
audience in East Stoneham.' The fun of that was that 
East Stoneham was a jumping-oflF place. It was the 
end of the road, and the people there couldn't read or 
write. 

"But the greatest joke he ever perpetrated was the 
will he made over in England. He called in all the 
nobility to witness it and disposed of his property as if 
he was a millionaire. Really he didn't have a darn cent." 

From a Norway lawyer I got further information. 
"When I started to practice I opened an office down 
at Waterford," he said. "I had plenty of time on my 
hands, for I didn't have much to do except to make 
out occasional deeds at fifty cents apiece. Once 
Artemus brought me a boy that he'd picked up some- 
where, and he hired me to teach him. He didn't value 
money, and he'd have given away his last dollar to a 
friend in need. 

"When he was at home he smoked and strolled 
around and joked with the boys. He was quite a fellow 
to lay abed in the morning — at least, his mother thought 
he was, and he wouldn't have breakfast until along 
toward ten o'clock. Afterward he'd get his mail and 
bring it to my office to read. 



46 Highways and Byways of New England 

"One time he was telHng me about his visiting 
Los Angeles. 'It was nothing but a village,' he said. 
'I'd heard there was a river running through the place, 
and I wanted to see it. 'Twasn't much of a river. I 
hunted for it quite a while before I found it, and then 
I was thirsty and drank it up.' 

"He was droll not only in what he said, but in his 
manner. Many of the things he said, which people 
would go into a perfect hurrah over, would have 
attracted no notice if another person had said them. 
It is claimed that he is the only person who could make 
every one laugh in an English audience." 

What I had heard of Artemus Ward's will made me 
desirous to see it, and I sought the county courthouse. 
His death occurred in England on March 6, 1867, and 
the will is dated about two weeks previous. It is not 
the extraordinary document that the popular imagina- 
tion pictures, and its most interesting portions are 
these: 

"I desire that my body may be buried in Waterford, 
Maine. I give the library of books bequeathed to me 
by my late Uncle, Calvin Farrar, and those that have 
been added by me, to the boy or girl who at an examina- 
tion to be held between the first day of January and 
the first day of April immediately succeeding my 
descease shall be declared to be the best scholar in 
Waterford Upper Village, such scholar to be a native 
of that last mentioned place and under the age of 
eighteen years. 



Artemus Ward's Town 47 

"I bequeath the residue of my estate towards form- 
ing a fund for the founding of an asylum for wornout 
printers in the United States, and I direct that the 
same be paid to Mr. Horace Greeley of New York." 

Whatever personal property the humorist had in his 
possession in England when he died mysteriously dis- 
appeared, but a few thousand dollars were realized on 
his house at Yonkers. This went to children who were 
relatives in his home town. His mother had enough 
property to supply her own simple wants as long as 
she lived. 

Notes. — All along the Maine coast are delightful bays and 
islands which attract a host of warm-weather visitors. Notable 
above all the other outing places of the coast is that isle of enchant- 
ment, Mount Desert. Champlain discovered it in 1613 and gave 
it its name, which was suggested by the bare rocky summits of its 
mountains. The charm of its scenery began to win the favor of 
wandering artists and parties of college students on a vacation 
about i860. Bar Harbor, which was then a primitive village of 
wooden shanties, has since become one of the most popular of fash- 
ionable American summer resorts. 

The chief city of the coast is Portland, which the visitor will be 
interested to recall is the birthplace of Longfellow. The house in 
which he was born was built by his grandfather, General Peleg 
Wadsworth and, though in the heart of the city, has been preserved 
as a public memorial. Twenty-six miles northeast is Brunswick 
where Bowdoin College is located and where Harriet Beecher Stowe 
wrote "Uncle Tom's Cabin" when her husband was an instructor 
in the college. 

In going from Portland to Artemus Ward's town the most direct 
route is over good dirt and gravel roads, forty-four miles, to Norway. 
About half way you pass through Poland Springs, famous for its 



48 Highways and Byways of New England 

table waters, with fine views and pleasant drives. A more pictur- 
esque route, but longer and over poorer roads, is along the west side 
of Sebago Lake. 

About fifty miles north of Waterford is Farmington, said to be 
the most beautiful village of its size in Maine. Here is the home- 
stead where Jacob Abbott, author of the Rollo Rooks, spent his 
last years. Not far beyond, to the northwest, is the famous Rangeley 
Lakes region. The chain of lakes, all connected by navigable 
waterways, covers eighty square miles. It is a fisherman's paradise. 
Small steamers ply the lakes and call at the various camps. These 
camps usually consist of a dozen or so log cabins connected with 
one another by plank walks, and each intended to accommodate 
three or four persons. 



Ill 



JUNE IN THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

AFTER the heat and dust of a long railroad ride 
it was a relief to get into the near vicinity of 
the soaring mountain heights, serene and cool 
and blue. The train followed up the valley of a little 
stony river, and much of the time we were in the shadow 
of the adjacent wooded hills. We passed through 
several villages, and there were scattered farms, but 
the region still has a flavor of the wilderness in its 
abounding woodland and rugged mountains, the piles 
of logs or sawed lumber one sees, and the big stumps 
in occasional farm fields. The cleared land is uneven 
and rocky and does not lend itself readily to agricul- 
ture, yet there are some evidently prosperous dairy 
farms, and excellent crops of potatoes, oats, and hay 
were growing in favored situations. 

I went to Bethlehem which is higher up and has 
more hotels than any other village in New England. 
At the beginning of the nineteenth century it consisted 
of a few scattered log cabins, and the settlers' fields 
were full of dead girdled trees. It could boast of only 
a single small hotel as late as 1865. Now there are 
thirty. These and the numerous summer homes 
harbor a multitude in July, August, and September, 



50 Highways and Byways of New England 

but the permanent inhabitants probably do not exceed 
a thousand. It lies on a breezy upland slope with a 
vast panorama of mountain ranges rimming most of 
the horizon. All the big wooden hotels had been put 
in order for the summer inrush, and what with the 
painting and scrubbing and other renovating they 
looked almost painfully spick and span. 

At the sunset hour when I arrived the birds were 
singing their jubilant evening songs in the village trees 
and in the neighboring woodland, and I could dis- 
tinguish the rich notes of the wood thrush, the carolling 
of robins, and the clear, sweet notes of the Peabody 
bird. 

As yet few of the summer people had come, and the 
local folk were much engrossed in their own affairs. 
One of the town's women stopped to visit in the twi- 
light on my hotel piazza when she was going home 
from prayer-meeting. She related some of the recent 
history of her church. A few years previous they had 
a minister of whom she spoke in the warmest praise. 
He was a preacher of marked ability, and a man of 
culture and character with a keen desire to do faithful 
work and to help those in need. One winter he 
shovelled snow from the paths and did other odd jobs 
about the place of a lone woman who was ill. This 
was not to the liking of some of his congregation. They 
thought such tasks beneath a minister's dignity, and 
there were various other ways in which his personality 
did not appeal to them. The upshot of it all was that 




The Flume 



June in the White Mountains 51 

he was presently dismissed. A while afterward another 
minister was hired, and he was given a grand reception. 

"But I didn't go," the chronicler said. "They asked 
me why, and I told 'em: 'He's got plenty of friends 
now. He'll need some later.' 

"Sure enough, they soon tired of him, but he wasn't 
of the gentle sort like the other man, and when they 
tried to get rid of him he fought back. There was a 
big row, and I told 'em, 'You people remind me of a 
man who for the first six months after he married liked 
his wife so well he wanted to eat her, and the next six 
months he wished he had.' 

"For quite a spell we didn't have any minister, but 
lately we've got a new man. They gave him a recep- 
tion, too. Only three went to it. That's all right. He 
might just as well find out everything is dead when he 
first gets here as afterward." 

Just then the landlord came out on the piazza. "This 
is hot weather," he remarked. " By jolly ! I was pretty 
near petered today. I had to drive a few miles down 
the valley, and I never was as thankful before that we 
don't have mosquitoes or black flies nor nothin' else 
of that sort of any consequence at Bethlehem. They 
nearly e't me up down there." 

"What are the black flies.?" I asked. 

"They're a fly about quarter as big as a common 
house fly," he replied, "and they bite to beat the band. 
Then there's the midgets. They're so small you can 
hardly see 'em. You don't notice 'em much till they 



52 Highways and Byways of New England 

bite. They're worse than the black fly. Oh, those 
little midgets are something terrible! If any of 'em 
bite me the bitten place swells up and itches and 
stings." 

A thunderstorm was muttering and blinking in the 
distance. During the night much rain fell, and the 
thunder reverberated among the heights. There were, 
too, a number of near and startling crashes which made 
the timid say their prayers and caused some persons 
at the hotel to get up and dress to be ready for emer- 
gencies. But the next morning, after the sun looked 
through the clouds, all the growing things had been 
refreshed and the dust was laid on the highways, and 
every one agreed that the storm had been a beneficence. 

I engaged a team and driver and went off over the 
hills to the Franconia Notch. We soon had the mighty 
mountains before us with their heads among the clouds, 
and with the sunshine and shadows playing over them 
In shifting hues of delicate green and purple. On some 
of them there were great expanses of a light emerald 
color, which the driver said were young growths of 
birches that had started up where fires had run through 
the forest. 

"We don't have those fires the way we used to," 
he added. "The woods are protected now. There are 
lookout places on the .nountains where men are watch- 
ing for fires all the whole summer through. The men 
have telescopes, and their lookouts are connected with 
the villages by telephone. As soon as they see smoke 



June In the White Mountains 53 

of a fire starting they telephone down saying where it 
is, and men are soon on the spot putting it out." 

We travelled a winding road that was constantly 
going up or down hill, and was usually closely hemmed 
in by the forest. Nearly always a stream was near by 
singing over the stones and boulders that strewed its 
course, and sometimes raising its voice in louder 
cadence where it made a sudden descent in a waterfall. 
We passed several typical mountain hotels — enor- 
mous, wide-spreading, many-windowed structures with 
carefully-kept grounds and close-clipped golf links. 
They contrasted strangely with the wilderness around 
and seemed very frail and ephemeral when compared 
with the vast upheaval of granite mountains that 
formed the usual background. 

Our first stop was at Echo Lake, a dainty body of 
water with steep wooded heights rising from its borders. 
I rambled along a waterside path and shouted, but a 
roistering wind was blowing, and the echo did not 
work well. The nymph on the tree-clad bluff across 
the lake only responded faintly and uncertainly. 

A mile farther on was Profile Lake where the great 
attraction is the Old Man of the Mountain. The woods 
sweep up a precipitous slope for more than a thousand 
feet, and you see near the summit of the mountain the 
grim stone features of the Old Man outjutting from a 
tremendous cliff. The face itself is eighty feet in length, 
but the beholder does not realize its great size at such 
a distance, and marvels most that it is so strikingly 



54 Highways and Byways of New England 

human. The Indians were its original discoverers, and 
I wondered what impression was made on them by 
that strange face gazing forth from the brow of the 
wilderness mountain. 

A scarcely less famous attraction of the Franconia 
Notch is the Flume. It is a little aside from the main 
valley up a steep slope. There you find an almost 
straight cleft in the mountain, nine hundred feet long 
and sixty or more deep. The perpendicular walls are 
only a few feet apart, and a little stream rushes down 
the shadowy depths with much noise and tumult. To 
enter the Flume on a warm day is like going into an 
ice-box. The stream and a strewing of boulders occupy 
all the space at the bottom of the chasm, and a board 
walk has been built just above the stream along one 
wall. The wet cliffs loom on either side, and up aloft 
you glimpse the foliage of the trees that grow on their 
verge. At the far end of the Flume the stream leaps 
from the brow of a precipice in a graceful cascade. 

Formerly there was an enormous suspended boulder 
in the Flume so firmly wedged between the cliffs that 
it seemed destined to stay there until doomsday. But 
in 1883 a violent thunderstorm started a landslide up 
beyond the cleft, and all the rubbish came down through 
and carried along the boulder. The mass of rocks and 
earth and trees was deposited some distance below. 
Whether the boulder was broken into fragments, or 
whether it lies buried entire in the debris no one 
knows. 



June In the White Mountains 55 

After I returned to the highway I tramped off in 
another direction on a sylvan path to "The Pool." 
Here in a deep nook of the woodland a stream dropped 
over a ledge into a rockbound basin. The mossy cliffs 
and towering trees that walled in the pool made it 
particularly cool and secluded and romantic. A lone 
fisherman sat on a shelving rock patiently angling for 
trout and smoking cigarets. When I came away he 
followed empty-handed making very scurrilous remarks 
about a certain trout he had seen in the pool which 
very inconsiderately refused to be caught. 

During the day's ride my driver casually mentioned 
that a certain Bethlehem man named Thompson had 
trapped a bear a fortnight before. I met him in the 
village that evening — a gray elderly man, but still 
vigorous. "Yes, I caught a bear this summer," he 
acknowledged. "I got him over on Gale River about 
three mile from here. I've caught eight bears there in 
the last five years. This one was fat as a pig. He 
weighed two hundred and fifty pounds. I gave con- 
siderable of the meat away to the neighbors. It was 
tender, and a lot of 'em e't it. But no bear meat for 
me! The animals smell too much like a colored person. 

"Their hides are best in May and June, and that's 
the only time of year I care to trap 'em. They com- 
mence to shed their hair about the middle of July. 
Then the hides won't bring nothin'. The prices we git 
for good ones vary anywhere from twenty to forty 
dollars. Besides, there's a five dollar bounty which 



56 Highways and Byways of New England 

you can collect by showing the hide to the proper 
official. He slits an ear or punches a hole in It so the 
bounty won't be collected a second time. The hide of 
the bear I got the other day is just as black as a crow. 
Come up to my house and I'll show it to you." 

He led the way to a comfortable little dwelling on a 
side street and stepped in to get a lantern. Then he 
took me to the shed when the bearskin was nailed up 
on an inside wall, and told how difficult the process 
was of getting the skin off with the claws on it and the 
ears and other parts of the head all complete, which 
was the proper way If it was to be used for a rug. 
Afterward he locked the shed and brought a bear trap 
from the barn for me to see. It was a big, savage- 
looking affair with stout steel springs and cruel, toothed 
jaws. 

Presently we adjourned to the house piazza, and my 
companion filled and lit his pipe. "Hunting runs in 
in the family," he remarked. "My father was a trapper 
and guide, and so was his father before him. He come 
into this town when he was a young feller. The 
region was about all woods then. It was a great timber 
country, and some of the people lived in log houses. 
Father was the first man who was ever paid as much as 
fifty cents a day for his labor here. Others got anywhere 
from twenty-five to forty cents. 

"All he used to do at certain times of the year was 
hunting. I've seen him take his gun when he'd just 
got up In the morning and say to mother, 'I'll be back 



June in the White Mountains 57 

to breakfast;' and he'd start off across country and 
not return for three days. He'd travel on and on look- 
ing for game. Come night he'd stop at some farmhouse, 
and he was always welcome. 

"One fall, when I was a boy, he had one hundred 
and twelve fox skins hung up in the unfinished second 
story of the house. He stuffed 'em with hay, and they 
looked plump and full. They were hung up by the 
nose. Most of our foxes were red, but now and then 
we'd git a woods gray. Sometimes too, we'd shoot 
what we called a Samson fox that you'd think, to see 
it, had been in the fire and got its fur singed. It looked 
so mean that the hide wasn't worth much. We'd git 
some coon and mink, and quite a lot of sable or martin, 
and once in a great while an otter. 

"My father lived to be ninety-five. People called 
him 'Old Man Thompson,' He knew all about wild 
animals. A feller come to him one day and said he'd 
tried again and again to keep red squirrels in a cage, 
but they pined away and died. 'You ketch your 
squirrel in a box trap,' Father told him, 'and don't let 
it eat for twenty-four hours. Then give it a dose of 
half molasses and half rum. After it gits over the 
effect of that it'll have forgotten its wild life and will 
thrive and be contented in the cage.' 

"Nearly fifty years ago he caught the last wolf that 
was ever seen in this country. A man had drawed a 
dead ox out in his pasture, and Father saw the wolf 
eating the ox. He set a trap and caught it. A long 



58 Highways and Byways of New England 

time after that I saw the tracks of two of 'em when I 
was back on the mountains deer hunting. They had 
been quite plenty here. 

"The bears come out of their winter sleeping places 
just as soon as the snow melts off. They're usually 
fat then, but food Is scarce until the berries git ripe in 
summer, and before that time the bears are pretty 
lean. In the spring they eat roots, and they'll tear a 
rotten log or stump all to pieces to git the big ants that 
are Inside. Those ants are sour. I used to have a 
Frenchman workin' for me who liked the taste of 'em. 
He'd find 'em when he was chopping, and he'd take a 
handful out and eat 'em. He said they tasted just like 
pickles. 

"Bears dig out yellow wasps' nests, and If they can 
git into a tree where there's honey they'll take that 
every time. They're great on beechnuts. In the fall 
they paw up the snow and leaves to git 'em. They 
like apples, and I've seen where they've climbed up and 
damaged a tree pretty bad, pulling In limbs and brushing 
'em off to git the fruit. Bears are good climbers, but 
they can't climb a small tree. It's got to be big enough 
to hug or to hang onto with their claws. They eat a 
good many wild turnips; and oh Lord! those turnips 
are smarty — just like cayenne pepper. They're the 
greatest thing in the world for a cold. Dry your turnip 
and grate it and put it in hot water and sweeten it. 
Then you've got a drink that'll roll the sweat right out 
of you if you take a good dose. 




A, 

o 



June in the White Mountains 59 

"I've got a camp over on Gale River, and one of my 
bear traps is set there now. When I want to trap a 
bear I try to find two old logs that lie about three feet 
apart. Then I build up on top of 'em with other logs 
to a height of three feet or so. I drive in stakes and 
use wire to hold the logs in position and prevent 'em 
from falling down or being knocked down by the bear. 
Then I make a kind of a coop by plugging up one end 
of the passage between the logs. I put bait at the far 
end of the coop, and right in front of the bait set my 
trap. The bait is any old refuse that I can git at the 
meat market. Codfish is good, or salt pork, or lamb. 
Honey is best of all. The bears like that awfully well, 
but it's a little too expensive. 

"I don't hitch the trap, because if I did the bear at 
his first jump would jerk his foot out. A bear is a 
drefful strong animal, and he's sure to git away unless 
you have a good holt on him. The trap itself weighs 
thirty pounds and has a chain five foot long hitched to 
it, and on the end of that is a three-clawed grapple 
which drags along and ketches on roots and things. 
The grapple hinders the bear so he won't go a great 
ways before he gits so tangled up he has to stop. He 
does some awful scratchin', tearin', and bitin'. Good 
land! I could show you the marks now made by one I 
caught two years ago. 

"There's just as many bears in these mountains as 
there ever was, but they keep away from the villages 
and farms usually, and people seldom have a sight of 



6o Highways and Byways of New England 

them. Besides, a bear does his stirring mostly at night. 
If they see you or smell you they git out of the way. 
Horses are all-fired afraid of 'em as a general thing. 
They can smell 'em half a mile. That's more than a 
man can do, but if you ketch one in a trap you can 
smell him all right. 

"When a bear's cornered you want to keep right 
away from him. He's got sharp claws, and he can give 
an awful blow. Let him git a good stroke at a man and 
he'll take all the clothes off and some of the feller's hide, 
too. Worse than a cornered bear is one that's got cubs. 

"A few years ago, in May, three of us were out 
a-iishing. We had a board shanty where lumbermen 
had been, not far from a road. One of the fellers was 
gittin' dinner, and I was in the camp layin' on the bed 
when a tramp come and told us that just up the road 
was two cubs and an old bear. He and another tramp 
had been going along the road, but when they saw the 
bears they didn't dast to go no farther. One of 'em 
stayed to keep track of the bears, and the other come 
running back to us. I took an old carbine we had, and 
we all went with him, but the animals wa'n't in sight, 
and the feller who was watchin' was so scat he didn't 
know where they'd gone nor nothin'. 

"The tramps went right along. They didn't stop for 
no ceremony, and we hunted around till we found the 
cubs up a tree. We had a meal sack and a rope, and 
one of the fellers dim' the tree and got a noose over the 
head of one of the cubs and let him down. But the 



June In the White Mountains 6l 

cub squealed like a little snipe. He wa'n't used to that 
kind of handling. 

"The feller that was with me on the ground suddenly 
dropped the bag. 'By George!' he yelled, 'there's the 
old bear!' 

"I looked up the hill and saw her comin' pell-mell. 
My gun was right handy, and I grabbed it and fired. 
I didn't hit her, but she turned and run into the woods. 
We bagged the cubs pretty quick then and went back 
to camp with 'em. Later we brought 'em to town and 
tamed 'em. One was clever as a kitten, but you 
couldn't go near the other without his cuffing you with 
his paw if he could. 

"About 1880 we had a bear hunt one Sunday morn- 
ing right here in the village. It was in July, and the 
place was pretty well filled up with summer people. 
A feller went to his pasture to fix his fence and saw an 
old bear and three cubs, and he come after Father and 
me. We'd done more hunting than all the rest of the 
people in the town. I had a little dog that was half 
hound, and I took him with me to see if he'd foller the 
trail. The bears had gone farther back up on the hill, 
but the dog ran along smelling the tracks as if he'd 
always follered bears. We found 'em on the edge of 
the woods and shot the old bear the first thing. Then 
the dog took after one of the cubs, and the cub went up 
a tree. We shot him, and the dog chased another down 
toward the village and treed him so we shot him, too. 
The third got away. 



62 Highways and Byways of New England 

"The people In the town heard the shooting and they 
found out in no time that we were after bears. Lots 
of 'em hustled up there on the hill — oh Lordy, yes! 
women and men both. A good many come out of 
church, and we had more of a congregation than the 
preachers did. There was a regular mob around the 
dead bears. The dog was the hero of the occasion. I 
kept him till he died of old age. If I had him today I 
wouldn't take a hundred dollars for him. 

"The worst scrape I ever had with a bear was one 
time when a neighbor who lived a little out from the 
village come and wanted me to set a trap for a bear 
that was ketchin' his sheep. Every few nights the bear 
would git a sheep, and sometimes he'd eat a whole one at 
once. I found where he went out through what we call 
a slash or hedge fence. The fence is made by notching 
small trees at about the height of four feet so the tops 
will fall over but remain hanging on the stumps. Tops 
and stumps form a kind of windrow thick enough to keep 
the cattle from gittin' into the woods beyond. 

"When the bear made a raid, as soon as he was back 
through the slash fence, he would stop and skin the 
sheep and eat it. A bear will skin a sheep as well as 
you could with a knife. Then he rolls the skin up and 
covers it roughly with sticks. The bear I was after 
had e't part of the last sheep he'd caught and left the 
rest, and I knew he'd return for it. I fixed the sheep 
In the bushes so he would have to come up In just one 
place to git it, and there I set my trap. 



June in the White Mountains 63 

"A few days later word was sent that the bear had 
gone off with the trap. My father and I and two other 
fellers went to foller him. In them days we tied a clog 
of wood to the chain, and the bear had dragged it into 
a clump of spruces. We saw where he had reached up 
to bite the trees trying to git away. He'd take chunks 
right out of 'em, and he had torn up some that were as 
big as a stovepipe. The clog was hitched to a heavy 
cable chain, but he finally broke that chain and got 
away into the big woods where it was hard tracking 
him. He went round and round and criss-cross and 
every way. Sometimes he lay down. Then he'd git 
up and go on. 

"We follered that bear much as ten mile before we 
saw or heard anything of him. He was on a mountain, 
and he started to run and the trap rattled on the 
stones that were there. A young feller named Brown 
and I were ahead, and we took after him and left the 
others behind. Just as soon as we come in sight of him 
he stopped and looked right at us. We stopped, too. 
He was a good big one, and he looked pretty sassy. 
I'd brought along a shotgun, and I took aim at one of 
his ears and shot six times. I knocked him down every 
time, but he jumped up afterward. Oh gorry! he'd git 
right up on his hind feet and snort like everything. 

"I used up all my cartridges, and Brown and I went 
to work with our jackknives, and cut some clubs as 
big as my arm. We thought the bear was about dead. 
Brown struck him with his club on the nose but didn't 



64 Highways and Byways of New England 

jar him a mite. It just made him all the madder. He 
run and stuck his head under a log. I pulled the 
bushes away to give him a swipe, but he dodged back. 
Then Frown whacked him and lost his balance. That 
gave the bear a chance to make a grab and put two of 
his tushes through Brown's wrist, and two through his 
hand. He made a snap just as a dog would and then 
let go. 

"By that time Father and the other feller had got 
along. That feller was a man who would weigh two 
hundred pounds, and now he thought he'd try his 
hand. He took a club and struck that bear right over 
the top of the head. The only result was that the bear 
started for him. I sung out to him to git out of the 
way, and he did. 

"'Twas almost dark then, and I told the others, 
'You can play with that bear as much as you want to, 
but Fm done until I git more ammunition.' 

"We all went down the mountain. Brown's wounds 
pained him terribly, and he like to have lost his hand 
before he got through. He never's been bear-hunting 
since. 

"The next morning I went back to the mountain 
with the shotgun and about twenty men come along 
with me. The bear was gone, but after follering his 
trail half a mile we found him. He was among the rocks 
and ledges and slash where 'twas rougher'n blazes, and 
he had crawled into an old mess of logs. He riz up and 
I shot him. Then he started toward us, and the fellers 



June in the White Mountains 65 

that was with me scattered every which way and cHm' 
the trees. He didn't go but a few steps when I let him 
have one more charge, and that finished him. 

"We hitched a rope to him and dragged him trap and 
all a mile or more out of the woods and then put him on 
a buckboard and brought him to town. He was a 
monster, but he only weighed three hundred pounds. 
There wasn't an ounce of fat on him. He was awful 
poor. I saved his hide, but the meat was no good. 
You couldn't eat a piece of it no more than you could 
the sole of your shoe it was so tough. He was a regular 
old racer." 

The White Mountains include no less than twenty 
bold peaks and abound in wild valleys, deep gorges, 
lakes, and cascades. They were held in much reverence 
by the Indians who believed them to be the abode of 
the Great Spirit and affirmed that no one who scaled 
the sacred heights returned alive. This, however, did 
not prevent the first white who wandered into the region 
in 1642 from climbing Mount Washington, the noblest 
height of all. He found many crystals which he mis- 
took for diamonds, and for a long time the mountains 
were called the "Crystal Hills." The first settlement 
among the mountains was made in 1792 by a hunter. 
About ten years later a small inn was built, but fifty 
years more passed before there were any hotels. 

I was eager for a close acquaintance with the monarch 
of the mountains, and one morning I set forth on foot 
from Bretton Woods to scale it. The distance across the 



66 Highways and Byways of New England 

lowlands to the base of the mountain was six miles, 
and nearly all the way the narrow road was hemmed in 
by forest. As I looked ahead the road seemed about 
to come to an end at every turn and to lead nowhere. 
It rarely afforded the least glimpse of the heights that 
I knew loomed so near. The only gaps were made by 
streams whose noisy waters writhed and leaped amid 
the ledges and boulders of the hollows. I constantly 
heard the birds calling in the vernal bowers around, and 
now and then there came to my ears the cheerful 
chatter of a chipmunk or squirrel. Sometimes I saw 
the hoofprlnts of a deer in the roadway. But I seldom 
caught sight of any of the forest animals either furred 
or feathered. 

After I reached the foot of the mountain I went on 
beside the cog railway that ascends to the summit. For 
a mile or two the tracks were in the center of a broad 
grassy space cleared through the woodland, and there 
was a faint path in the sward so that the climbing was 
not especially arduous. Occasionally I stopped to 
rest and look back on the broad landscape of almost 
unending forest, and the maze of dreamy mountains 
that bounded the horizon. 

As I went higher the route became rough and rocky, 
and I walked on the ties for the most part. The rail- 
road was on a trestle only slightly above the level of the 
ground, unless it crossed a depression. But the ties 
were greasy and slippery and had gaping holes between 
them, and when the trestle was exceptionally high and 




s 

o 






g 



June in the White Mountains 67 

dizzy I abandoned it. A misstep would perhaps mean 
a broken leg, or a train might come along and make 
things awkward for me. So I preferred a tooth and 
nail scramble down below over the big angular rock 
fragments. 

The trees steadily diminished in size, and at the 
height of three thousand feet they were not half as 
large as those in the valley. At four thousand feet they 
were mere shrubs, scraggly, stunted, and gray with age 
and shaggy moss. Presently even these pinched earth- 
hugging birches and spruces found the soil too thin and 
the warfare with the elements too strenuous, and there 
was nought but a dun waste of shattered, lichened 
rocks with intervals of coarse grass, moss, diminutive 
blueberry bushes, and a few dainty blossoms. The 
rock fragments of this blighted upper region looked as 
if they had lain there unchanged for ages. Roundabout 
were desolate forbidding heights frowning down on 
many a yawning gulf whose steep slopes were scarred 
with bare yellow streaks left by landslides. 

Occasional patches of snow lingered on the upper 
slopes, and the air had grown much colder. A gusty 
chilling gale was blowing that threatened to carry me 
away bodily, and whenever I came to a sheltering ledge 
or water tank I hastened to get in its lee and catch my 
breath. The railway went up and up interminably as 
if it aspired to reach to heaven, but at last I saw a 
scattered group of buildings on ahead, and in a few 
minutes was at the summit. Sober clouds overhung 



68 Highways and Byways of New England 

and sometimes enveloped it, and though the lowlands 
had their drifting patches of sunlight no ray struggled 
through on the mountain top. 

A train had come up from below, and here and there 
were groups of sightseers in fluttering wraps. "This is 
the coldest place I ever came across," one of them was 
saying. "You need all your furs and winter clothes on. 
I want to look around, but every few minutes I have to 
go in and get warm." 

The chief refuge was the Tip Top House which rested 
on the summit among the rocks like a stranded Noah's 
Ark. It Is long and low, has walls of stone, and its 
roof Is made secure by anchoring It with numerous 
cables and rods. There is plenty of need of having 
everything in trim for rough weather, for the wind has 
registered here the amazing velocity of one hundred and 
eighty-eight miles an hour. As to temperature the 
cold Is capable of sending the mercury down to fifty 
degrees below zero. 

The Interior of the Tip Top House with Its low 
ceilings and rude furnishings could hardly have been 
any more primitive when the building was erected in 
1853. Long before that visitors had begun to come to 
the mountain In considerable numbers. A bridle path 
was cut to Its top in 18 19, and the next year some 
gentlemen stayed on the summit over night and named 
the different peaks. The cog railroad was completed 
In 1869. 

I concluded to go down on the train. It consisted 



June In the White Mountains 69 

of a single car and a curious caricature of an engine, 
both constructed to run on a steep slant. Presently 
the sightseers clambered into the car, and the dumpy 
engine got into motion for the three mile trip to the 
base. It crept along at a snail's pace with much hissing, 
creaking, and rumbling, as If fearful of losing Its grip 
and making a wild dash down the mountain to destruc- 
tion. Most of the passengers were cheerful and talka- 
tive, but there was one fat man who seemed to have 
been frozen stiff. His hat brim was turned down all 
around, and a sweater was wound about his neck. As 
he sat there silent and immovable, he had much the 
appearance of a mud turtle with its head almost with- 
drawn into its shell. We were nearly down the moun- 
tain before he began to show signs of life. 

In the mild lower region there was little hint of the 
savage gale that blew at the summit, and I rambled 
away through the forest toward the Crawford Notch. 
It was warm on the sheltered roadways, and whenever 
a roadside sign informed me that a spring was near I 
was tempted to pause and drink a cooling draught. 
But always the vicinity of the springs was the lurking 
place of a horde of bloodthirsty midgets, flies, and 
mosquitoes, who quickly drove me back to the high- 
way from the otherwise Inviting nooks. I fared better 
when I sought for water in some woodland brook 
tinkling among its green, mossy stones. 

One of the characters of the region whose fame has 
lived after him was a man commonly known as "English 



yo Highways and Byways of New England 

Jack." "He was an awful rough old fellow," a local 
dweller explained to me. "He'd been at sea and got 
wrecked on an island where he had to eat snakes and 
frogs and roots, and all such things. If he could find a 
snake he'd take it to a hotel and eat it before the guests, 
and they'd give him money. His home was right at the 
rocky entrance to the Crawford Notch up in the woods 
just out of sight from the highway. There was a good 
path to it, and a sign by the roadside invited people to 
come to see 'The House that Jack Built.' Lots of folks 
would go up there and look around, and they'd pay 
him ten cents or a quarter or so apiece. He certainly 
was an odd old stick and a great talker, and I presume 
he told a good deal that wa'n't true. He had some 
trinkets to sell and a tame bear and a tank of big trout 
that he exhibited. One day he got boozy and went to 
foolin' with the bear, and, I snum! if help hadn't come 
Jack would have been killed. After being clawed so 
bad he had the bear shot," 

The house was still standing, and when I approached 
the Notch I turned aside onto a path that led to it. 
This took me through woodland on the shadowed side 
of a hill where the air was cool and the light was dim 
and the surrounding forest full of eerie mystery, and 
then I came forth onto a grassy knoll brightened with 
sunlight. There stood a ruinous shack of curious 
architecture with the forest boughs throwing out pro- 
tecting arms over it. The walls were partly of logs and 
partly of odds and ends of boards. Inside was a chaos 



June in the White Mountains 71 

of broken furniture and rubbish, and the whole house 
was disintegrating and threatening to fall to pieces. 

Up in the heart of the Notch occurred in 1826 the 
most noteworthy tragedy of the mountains. An 
occasional life has been lost in winter storms, and there 
have been some serious accidents to travellers on the 
roads, but the catastrophe in the Notch excels all others 
in its appeal to the imagination. Here was a rustic inn 
occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Willey, their five children 
and two hired men. At dusk on the 20th of August a 
storm burst on the mountains and raged with great 
fury through the night. Every tiny stream became a 
torrent, and the valleys were flooded, and the roads 
were impassable. 

Two days later a traveller succeeded in getting to 
the Willey House, which he found standing in woeful 
desolation. An avalanche of earth, rocks, and trees 
had descended from the mountain and barely missed 
carrying it away. When the traveller pushed open the 
door a dog disputed his entrance and howled mourn- 
fully. The lonely cabin had no other inmates. Beside 
the beds lay the clothing of the members of the house- 
hold, indicating a hasty and frightened flight. Ap- 
parently they had become aware of the danger that 
threatened, and had run forth seeking safety only to be 
overwhelmed. If they had remained in the house they 
would not have been harmed, for the avalanche 
divided a little back of the dwelling and rushed by on 
either side leaving the frail structure standing, though 



72 Highways and Byways of New England 

some of the debris struck it with sufficient force to 
move it slightly from Its foundations. The bodies of 
Mr. and Mrs. Wllley were found later, but not those 
of the rest of the household. For twenty-one miles 
down the valley the turnpike was demolished, and 
more than a score of bridges were swept away. Some 
of the meadows were burled several feet deep with 
earth and rocks, and there were great barricades of 
trees that had been torn up by the roots. 

From the Crawford Notch I walked back to Bretton 
Woods where I arrived just after sunset. But beyond 
the dusky lowlands a warm glow lingered on the big 
blue heights of the Presidential Range that bulwarked 
the east, while above them were clouds delicately 
flushed with tints of rose and saffron. 

Notes. — The manifold attractions of the mountains can only be 
appreciated by making an extended stay. The central group of 
heights is called the Presidential Range from the fact that the 
various peaks are named after the early presidents. Next in im- 
portance are the neighboring Franconia Mountains. On the 
eastern side of Mount Washington the only highway up the moun- 
tain starts from Glen House, eight miles south of Gorham. Auto- 
mobiles can make the ascent. Accommodations are provided at 
the summit for persons who wish to stay overnight. One of the 
clefts in the mountains which particularly deserves a visit is Dix- 
ville Notch, which with its crags and pinnacles is more Alpine in 
character than any other portion of the granite hills. The roads 
are in the main excellent, though the grades are sometimes steep. 
The intending visitor should have a good guidebook and some of the 
attractive pamphlets published by the railroads. 



IV 



A NEW HAMPSHIRE PARADISE 

I WAS at Windsor on the Vermont bank of the 
Connecticut approaching an old covered toll bridge, 
which I planned to cross, for on the opposite side 
of the river was the paradise. But the sky was gloomy 
with clouds, and rain began to fall. Even paradise, I 
was afraid, might be somewhat unsatisfactory in a 
downpour, and I betook myself to the shelter of the 
tollgate-keeper's piazza adjacent to the bridge entrance. 
The keeper himself sat there on guard watching the 
teams and individuals coming and going. He usually 
called out a greeting to those who went past, but only 
occasionally did he collect toll. 

"It's like this," he explained; "most of the local 
people buy yearly passes at from two to fifteen dollars 
according to the amount of crossing they do. That 
gives the right of way to a man's teams and all his 
family. Now and then I have a little dispute as to 
what is a fair rate. One woman told me this spring she 
just wouldn't pay what I charged. *Well,' I says, 
'you can make up your mind on which side of the river 
you want to stay, and then you can stay there. You 
can't cross this bridge.' 

"So she paid. For footmen we have a lump rate of 



74 Highways and Byways of New England 

ten cents a month. To cross a single time we charge a 
man two cents, but most of them pay three cents to go 
over and back. A good deal of our business is due to a 
saloon near the other end of the bridge. There's pro- 
hibition on our side of the river, and a pile of men go 
over there every day to get their bitters. Take it 
Saturday night, and there's a string of 'em all the time, 
and they don't give a hurrah what the weather is. They 
can buy the liquor any way they want it, from a glass 
to a barrel. The saloon bottles up and ships off a good 
deal to the prohibition towns, and it makes more money 
than all our merchants here in Windsor put together. 
But it has to be pretty careful and quiet or it would get 
shut up. I never saw that business handled so de- 
cently, and they rarely let a man drink so much that 
he makes trouble. 

"I don't have much trouble, anyway. Once in a 
while I see a team coming across trotting, and then I 
drop the gate down and collect a two dollar fine, though 
if the party is ugly about it we may kind o' com- 
promise. You see where the gate has been mended. 
I dropped it one time to stop a runaway; but I won't 
try that again. The horse smashed right through, and 
a little farther along two fellers thought they could 
bring the horse to a standstill by holding up a blanket. 
That didn't do any good either. The horse kept 
straight on and tore the blanket all to tatters. 

"There's ten more just such toll bridges as this on 
the river between Vermont and New Hampshire. They 



A New Hampshire Paradise 75 

belong to private companies. I suppose the pubHc 
ought to own 'em so travel would be free, and there's 
attempts being made to bring that about. The state 
legislatures have tackled the subject, but New Hamp- 
shire owns to high-water line on this side of the river 
and most the whole length of the bridges is on New 
Hampshire territory. The benefits would be equal; 
but the two states don't agree about the proportion 
each ought to pay to buy out the bridge companies. 
Then, too, the advantages gained would be almost 
wholly for those who lived close by. The other 
parts of the state don't see any gain for them, and 
they're inclined to fight being taxed for such a pur- 
chase. So there's a hitch and a haul and we don't get 
nowhere. 

"This bridge was built about forty years ago. The 
one we had before was washed away in a big flood. 
That was in February 1866. An ice jam formed below 
here, and the water dammed back and lifted off the 
bridge. It hung together long enough as it went down 
stream to smash a hole through the next covered bridge, 
but the ice and water finally tore it all to pieces." 

In the midst of the shower the tollgate-keeper called 
out to a man in a buggy, "A little damp this morning, 
ain't it.?" 

"Yes, in some places," the man responded cheerfully. 

When the scud was over he greeted another passer 
with the query, "Is it done raining, Tom.?" 

"I do' know," Tom said. "May be letting go to get 



76 Highways and Byways of New England 

a new hold. It looks promising enough just now, but 
I bet you we're goln' to get some more." 

One Individual who drove by was a peddler of hulled 
corn. "And he sells quite a little around," the gate- 
keeper observed. "But I don't relish it. They do the 
hulling now with soda, and the corn ain't got that lye 
taste the old-fashioned sort had. I can remember as a 
boy how my grandmother used to take a bag of wood 
ashes and put it right In the kittle with the corn, and 
her hulled corn tasted first-rate. We e't it with milk." 

The sun was now shining brightly down on the wet 
earth, and I paid the keeper of the tollgate three cents 
and went across the bridge to Cornish. Somewhere in 
the township, far back from the river, there is a village; 
but it is not in the paradise portion, and no one 
seemed to know exactly where Cornish village is. I 
did not attempt to discover it myself; for I was quite 
content with the region In which I then was. The 
combination of pleasant vales and big irregular hills Is 
so charming that it has taken the fancy of a gradually 
increasing colony of artists and authors, and of certain 
other persons who have taste and wealth, if not genius. 
Cultivated fields and pastures Intermit with patches 
of woodland where the trees grow undisturbed to full 
stature. Streams of varying size abound, and to the 
southward rises the mighty form of Mount Ascutney, a 
lonely blue peak that presides over and lends dignity 
to the scene. The giant mountain did not at any time 
fully reveal itself on my first day in the region. Even 



A New Hampshire Paradise 'j'] 

after nearly the whole sky had cleared it continued to 
sleep among the clouds, and a cloud cap was still resting 
on the summit when night came. 

It was early September, and the grasses and other 
wild growths formed rank tangles along the borders of 
the roads and fields. Conspicuous In this plant-world 
jungle were the podded milkweeds and the blossoms of 
the wild sunflowers, asters, goldenrods, and stout- 
stemmed thistles. Another characteristic of the begin- 
ning of autumn was the astonishing abundance of 
Insect life. The air was everywhere melodious with 
tiny trills and pipings, and at midday the cicadas 
shrilled their long-drawn song of heat. If I crossed a 
field a squad of grasshoppers leaped away each time 
I took a step, and I found insects of some sort in every 
nook and cranny that I chanced to observe. Once I 
paused to look at a clump of goldenrod. Numerous 
flies and many-colored bugs and bees haunted its 
flower-clusters. But these honey-hunters did not 
comprise all the Insects present there; for down below, 
amid the leaves and stems, certain bloodthirsty spiders 
had spread their snares and, head downward, in the 
middle of their nets, they waited for such of the un- 
wary lovers of the bloom as might happen to blunder 
into their traps. Evidently paradise was not all it 
might be among these little wild folk and I suppose 
It Is only the human residents who feel the uplift of the 
beautiful environment. 

Some of the city people who have chosen to own 



78 Highways and Byways of New England 

homes in this region stay merely during the warm 
weather, and others through the entire year. Each 
family has selected the spot that most appealed to them 
amid the medley of rough pastures, wooded hollows 
and old farm fields, and has there erected a mansion 
and turned the immediate vicinity into an oasis of 
lawn and garden, fountains and terraces, hedgerows, 
and ornamental trees and shrubbery. These homes 
and their surroundings are often wonderfully charming, 
and some of the gardens with their tints of rainbow are 
like bits of fairyland; but the landscape as a whole 
continues half-wild, and the Intervals between the 
widely scattered mansions are for the most part 
ordinary farming country. 

A few of the old farms have been bought entire, but 
more often the purchase is of a comparatively limited 
number of acres. To quote one of the natives, "Most 
of these people don't care about bein' near their neigh- 
bors or livin' on a main highway, or even about owning 
good land. It seems to suit 'em best if they can put 
up a house way off in a pasture. They'll buy the 
rockiest, meanest land we've got — the very worst spots 
that are to be had. It's strange, ain't it, goin' off in a 
pasture to live; but they must like It, I suppose. Last 
year a new man bought a patch of that rough land and 
paid six thousand dollars for it. The farmer 'twas 
bought of had been quite a lot in debt; but he got 
twice what his whole place was naturally worth, and 
since then he's been aboveboard. Of course everybody 



A New Hampshire Paradise 79 

knew the price that was paid, and the assessors tried 
to tax the buyer at that rate instead of what the land 
had been paying in the past. They were a little too 
cunning and they slipped up in that scheme. If they 
hadn't pushed on to him so hard they'd been all right; 
but he wouldn't pay the bill they sent him and said 
he'd spend twenty thousand dollars fighting 'em before 
he'd stand such a tax. So they finally backed down. 

"When a city family comes and builds a house and 
settles in it, you might think they'd got everything 
right and the place fixed up for good; but they ain't 
contented to leave well enough alone. They're always 
Improving and changing, tearing down, and adding on. 
They are sure to spend a great deal more than they 
expected 'twould cost 'em when they started. I know 
one man who's spent ten times what he intended to 
lay out. He made his first mistake by putting up his 
house way off in the woods. There hain't no other 
fine house anywhere near him. In order to connect 
with the highway he built a road down the side of 
the ridge on which his house stands. That road cost 
him a thousand dollars, and it couldn't be used, after 
all, it was so steep. His cellar, too, was a big expense. 
It is blasted out of the solid rock. I'll give you one 
more instance which shows his way of managing. He 
set out an orchard, and it was doing first-class; but a 
friend of his told him it ought to be somewhere else. 
So he pulled it up and changed it to another location." 

From where we were standing we could see one of 



8o Highways and Byways of New England 

these handsome modern country mansions a mile or 
two away across the rude uplands. It had a delightful 
perch on the summit of a lofty hill overlooking the lower 
hills and wooded glens far and near, and its white- 
walled magnificence with Lombardy poplars standing 
sentinel about was quite enchanting. 

"A woman built that place," my companion said. 
"When she first looked around in this region she selected 
a spot over to the eastward right up on a pine knob; 
but after she'd bought it she discovered that it had 
no water. She paid a pretty good price for the sake of 
having a piece of pine timber. • It wouldn't do for her 
house site, and then she got this hill yonder. She was 
a genius — quite a poet; but in the course of a few 
years she died, and her sister became the owner of the 
property. This sister wa'n't gifted like the other 
woman, and yet if she got excited you might think she 
was gifted, too. Let her have the idea that the butcher 
was charging her two cents a pound more than his meat 
was worth, and she'd step right out and tell him what 
she thought of such doin's. Oh, she was fluent, and if 
he tried to explain, she wouldn't listen, but kept straight 
on till she'd said her say. Then she'd turn around and 
march into the house. 

"Look down there toward the low ground. Just 
where the v/oods end is a big field with cattle in it. 
Those are Mrs. Churchill's cows — that is, everybody 
calls 'em her cows. She's the farmer and the business 
man of the family. Mr. Churchill is something of a 



A New Hampshire Paradise 8i 

politician, and a smart, nice feller, but kind of aristo- 
cratic. He tries his best to be easy and companionable 
with us ordinary people; and yet that aristocraticness 
crops out in spite of thunder. He started in to run for 
governor last year, and he rattled the thing up good, I 
gorry! They defeated him, but they ain't got him 
quieted yet. 

"His house is over in the woods beyond where the 
cows are, and it's a fine one, I tell you. I often wonder 
that he didn't buy better land while he was about it. 
That farm is nothing but an old sandbank, anyway. 
Gracious! you can't raise a decent crop on it, the land 
is so terrible poor, and in some places the soil won't 
even grass over. Yes, and this dry season has pretty 
much knocked Mrs. Churchill out in the farming line. 

"Of course all these new folks that have come in here 
are very different in their tastes and interests from us, 
and we don't associate much with them except as we 
do work about their places. Now, last night they got 
up an entertainment and give it in a hall in the village 
just north of here. Tickets was two dollars apiece, and 
they had singing and tableaux and a play; and every 
darn thing was in French. 'Twa'n't for the world's 
people. You might think we'd meet 'em at church, 
but they are not a church-going class — at least not here 
in the country. They spend Sundays playing cards 
or doing anything else that happens to strike them, and 
Sunday nights they have parties. 

"In one way, though, they have really taken hold 



82 Highways and Byways of New England 

with us — and that is in starting a village industry 
business among our women. They've got the thing 
going and it's a success. Making artistic rugs is the 
main work. One of the leaders of the rug-making 
circle lives in the first little house up the road. Call in 
and ask her about it. She c'n tell you more'n the 
Almighty, and there's nothin' pleases her so much as 
to unwind." 

Another of the local dwellers had now joined us, and 
he asked, "But will she stop when she gets run down?" 

"I never stayed long enough to find out that," the 
first man replied. "However, they've got quite an 
industry and no mistake." 

The opinions this man expressed of the newcomers 
and their homes and habits interested me scarcely less 
than the region itself, and when I met others of the 
original occupants of the vicinity I pursued the sub- 
ject further. In particular I had a long chat one even- 
ing with a man I came across fishing in a little millpond 
near the road I was travelling. First he enlightened 
me as to the luck he was having. 

"I ain't ketchin' nothin'," he said, "and I wish I'd 
gone to the river. The children are always teasin' me 
to go there, and I usually get a nice mess to bring 
home. One bass I ketched weighed five pounds. A 
few weeks ago when I was gettin' more'n I wanted to 
eat I put a pickerel and a bass into the watertub at the 
place where I work. Fish are a drefful nice thing in a 
watertub. They keep every bug and worm out. If a 




The fisherman 



A New Hampshire Paradise 83 

fly gets on the surface, it won't be no time before you'll 
hear that water splash, and the fly's eaten. It's fun 
to see them fish swim round in there. I feed 'em bread. 
That's the best thing for fish; but once in a while I 
get 'em some shiners, and if I throw in just a single one 
both the two big fish get hold of it, and they'll fight 
terrible before either one'll give up. 

"I ain't workin' today, and I s'pose my boss won't 
like it; for help is awful skurce. Since these city people 
have settled here a laboring man needn't never be out 
of a job unless he wants to be, and he is sure of good 
wages and his pay every Saturday night. They've 
made a big change in the look of things, and if the folks 
who was here forty years ago was to come back they 
wouldn't hardly know where they was. Those old- 
time houses was quite diff"erent from what you see now; 
but the people who lived in 'em knew how to farm. 
We don't raise any such quantities of corn and grain 
and hay as they did. The land needs takin' up and 
cultivating once in four or five years to get real good 
crops. But now a great many of the fields are mowed 
year after year and never teched with a plough. All 
that the present owners care to do is just to keep things 
about so. They ain't farmin' to make money, and they 
don't quarter pay expenses. 

"It suits 'em to own fine cattle, and where I'm 
workin' they've got a cow-stable that's better and 
cleaner than lots of houses. We scrub it out with 
brooms and water every day, and the cows have their 



84 Highways and Byways of New England 

bags washed and wiped before they are milked. Each 
cow's milk is kept separate and weighed and recorded. 
The herd gets the best of feed, and the milk is richer 
than the average and ought to bring a better price, but 
it all goes to the creamery at five cents a quart same as 
any farmer's. 

"There's a lot of nice chickens and turkeys on the 
place. I believe the turkeys count up sixty-five in all. 
One of the old ones stole a nest and hatched out sixteen. 
That brood is kind o' wild and ain't been to the house 
yet. Turkeys are great hands to eat grasshoppers and 
crickets, and they'll go through a field just like a com- 
pany of soldiers keeping abreast of each other and 
cleaning up every insect as they go. When we are 
mowing, the machine drives the bugs and things toward 
the center of the field and they are very thick in the 
patch of grass that still stands after we get most done. 
The turkeys seem to know they can find more there 
than anywhere else, and when we near the finish they 
take a swath and follow just as fast as we mow. 

"Very few of the farmers I used to know are here 
now — and you can't blame 'em for lettin' their land go 
when they was gettin' such high prices for it." 

The most notable member of the colony which dis- 
covered and in large part made this New Hampshire 
countryside the paradise that it is, was the sculptor, 
Augustus St. Gaudens. He had recently died, at the 
time of my visit, and I heard many reminiscences 
illustrating his characteristics. The rural folk all had 



A New Hampshire Paradise 85 

a warm affection for him, and in their way eulogized 
him as highly as could the sculptor's intimate associates 
in his own realm. 

"St. G. was a number one man," a Cornish resident 
I encountered in my rambles affirmed. "He never 
put on any airs, and in meeting and talking with the 
people that live around here he seemed to be one of us. 
He was just as companionable and simple, too, with 
the servants who worked for him, and often they come 
near forgetting he was their employer. I recollect how 
he once helped some servants who'd just got here, 
strangers from the city, to find their way. They were 
walking to one of the big houses where they were goin' 
to work, and when they got there they told how they'd 
met 'a real nice old gentleman' down the road who gave 
them directions through the woods. That nice old 
gentleman was St. Gaudens. 

"It was his habit to have his own servants come into 
his studio just before any work of his was goin' to be 
shipped away so they could see it. One time when 
everything was ready to take down a new statue, and 
the workmen were settin' around waitin', two or three 
of the maids was busy in the house and couldn't come 
right then. Some of Mr. St. Gauden's family thought 
it was pretty expensive waiting with the pay of the 
workmen running on, and that the job ought to be 
started at once; but the sculptor wouldn't hear of 
touching a thing till all the servants could get there to 
see the statue. 



86 Highways and Byways of New England 

"He was very patient, usually, and he'd hear the 
most long-winded caller to the end without showing a 
sign of irritation, when I knew he was so nervous he 
couldn't hardly hold himself together. But he wa'n't 
afraid to speak in meeting if he got riled, and those 
who knew him at all knew enough not to speak to him 
when he was studying. 

"His work brought him a good deal of money; but 
I guess he spent it most as fast as it came to him. He 
was always doing things over about his place. If he 
thought some stone steps would improve a terrace, he 
got seventeen or eighteen men and had the steps put 
in. Then pretty soon he'd think they'd be better some- 
where else, and he'd have his gang of men come and 
tear up where he wanted the steps moved to, and after 
the moving was done they'd turf over the old place. 
That's the way things would go, and it was the same 
in his studio — he was sure to be a great while finishing a 
piece of work because he was forever thinkin' he could 
improve it. 

"There never was a man more generous. For in- 
stance, he was comin' home from Windsor one winter 
day, and he drove along to where a poor family lived 
and saw four of the children sliding down hill. But 
they only had one sled, and he says, 'Is that all the sled 
you've got?' 

"They says, 'Yes;' and what does he do but turn 
smack around and go back to Windsor and buy three 
sleds so those children would have one apiece. 




Old-time natives 



A New Hampshire Paradise 87 

"Then I know one time when a man who'd worked 
for him a number of years was goin' to move away, and 
St. G. says to him, 'I've never felt as if I paid you 
enough;' and he took his check-book and wrote him 
a check for one hundred dollars. 

"In the latter part of his life he hadn't been well for 
a long time and he suffered a good deal of pain; but 
when he first come here he was as well as any one, and 
he'd go out and play ball and was one of the boys 
among boys. He never complained, no matter how he 
suffered. One peculiar thing was that he was always 
cold, poor man. There might be a great big fire in the 
fireplace and the furnace goin' for all It was worth, 
and his wife would be roasted, and yet he was cold. 

"Well, he's gone now, and his body was cremated, 
and his ashes are buried over in Windsor. He wanted 
'em sprinkled over the flower-garden; but you know, if 
they'd done that they never could rent the place. Yes, 
he's gone, and he was a number one man. I don't 
suppose we shall ever see his like here again." 

Notes. — Cornish is in a region that is distinctly rustic, far from 
any big town, and with much in life and nature around that is raw 
and half wild; yet here you find many magnificent estates of people 
of wealth and fame including statesmen, authors, and artists, and 
it has even been the summer home of a president of the United 
States. Mount Ascutney, 3,320 feet high, is one of the striking 
features of the vicinity. Twenty miles north is Hanover, the seat 
of Dartmouth College, where Daniel Webster graduated. The 
main roads in the region are good gravel or dirt. The less said about 
the others the better. 



ON THE SHORES OF LAKE CHAMPLAIN 

WHEN I looked on the map and saw, adjacent 
to the Vermont shore of the lake, Grand Isle 
with the towns of North Hero and South 
Hero on it, the romantic appeal of those names was 
irresistible, and thither I journeyed. I soon learned 
that "Grand" referred to size, not scenery, and I failed 
entirely to discover the significance of the two "Heroes" ; 
yet, my acquaintance with the undulating, rich-soiled, 
well-tilled island was nevertheless very satisfying. The 
place I chose to stop at was a rustic village on one of the 
ridges where the scattered homes reposed amid shade 
trees and orchards. I lodged in a stone-walled old 
hotel at a cross-roads, and just across the way was a 
wooden store before which a number of farm teams 
were usually to be seen hitched while their owners 
traded inside and swapped the news of the neighbor- 
hood. Most of the teams had been driven in from the 
region surrounding to bring milk to the creamery, for 
dairying is a chief source of income. Great herds of 
cows grazed in the pastures, and alfalfa was growing on 
many broad fields to furnish feed for them. 

One afternoon I called on an old resident of the 
vicinity, a man eighty years of age. While we talked 



On the Shores of Lake Champlain 89 

he sat by the dining-room stove with a cat in his lap. 
His wife, who had been blind and deaf for several years, 
presently came feeling her way to him from the next 
room. She had somehow sensed the fact that he had a 
caller, and wanted to know who was there. He replied 
in a sign language on her fingers, and she went back to 
the other room. 

I questioned my host about conditions on the island 
as he had known them in his youth, and he said: "When 
I was a boy this country was much wilder than it is 
now and lynx still lived in the woods. They wa'n't 
afraid to tackle sheep and made considerable trouble 
for us, A lynx was an ugly feller to handle if you got 
him cornered. Once our geese got away, and I went to 
the lake lookin' for 'em. While I was there I saw a 
lynx slide down the rocks to the edge of the water, and 
I watched him lickin' it up. Afterward he ran back up 
the rocks. I wa'n't old enough to be out on a hunt, 
with a gun, but some of the men follered the lynx and 
shot him in a swamp. Later they had him at the store 
stuffed. 

"I can recollect too, when I was a youngster, we had 
quite a stir about a wolf. It was in winter, and they 
chased him with hounds over the ice to another island, 
but he got away. There used to be lots of eagles 
around, and we'd see 'em flying day after day, or sitting 
on a dry tree. We still have a fair number of foxes and 
they do a bad business for people that keep turkeys. 

"Great flocks of wild geese used to fly over, and 



9© Highways and Byways of New England 

they'd stop in the marshes and buckwheat fields. 
When I'd be out milking the cows in the yard in the 
spring, I could hardly look up without seeing ducks or 
geese going north. I often killed 'em. Sometimes we'd 
ketch 'em alive and tame 'em to put out as decoys. 
One man here had a tame wild goose that went away in 
the fall with a wild flock, and after two years it come 
back. They always fly in a V shape with the old gander 
ahead. If you can shoot him first you have a chance 
to fire several times at the others. They're all mixed 
up and keep flying round and round to get another 
leader. While they're travelling they're sure to be 
squawking, and when they plan to light they're still 
squawking as they circle about to see if the coast is 
clear. But as soon as they've lit they're all still. If 
they're in a buckwheat field you won't hear a sound, 
and the old gander will be watchin' every minute with 
his head up while the rest are eatin'. 

"Our farm ran to the lake, and we had a splendid 
fishing-ground. When there come a lowery day we and 
some of the neighbors would go down and draw a 
seine. We'd perhaps take along a two gallon jug of 
hard cider, and we'd have quite a visit and a good time. 
I don't recall that the cider had any bad effect. To get 
drunk on cider a feller would have to be quite an h-o-g. 
He'd have to swill down a lot of it. We caught pike 
and pickerel and muscallonge and shiners and suckers, 
and we'd get perch by the quantity. It wouldn't be 
possible to make any such hauls now. The law has got 




Qj 



h. 



On the Shores of Lake Champlain 91 

the thing cornered down so you can't ketch small fish, 
but the lake is pretty well drained of 'em, big and little. 
We threw back what we didn't want. Some we salted 
down. We still eat a good many lake fish, but there's 
none of 'em taste as good to me as they did when I was 
a boy. 

"I think I'll have to take a pull at my pipe. I smoke 
occasionally and sometimes oftener. Seven or eight 
years ago I smoked one cigaret. I've never wanted any 
since. That cured me. 

"Talking about changes, we used to get our mail 
once a week. Later, when we got it twice a week we 
felt as if we lived in the city. Now we have rural de- 
livery every day, and I'm expectin' the next thing 
they'll send some one along to read our letters to us. 

"The main part of farming here in my young days 
was keeping sheep. Lots of farmers had two or three 
hundred and sheared 'em for their wool. Now we've 
shifted to cows, and that's been a big thing for us. It's 
knocked the mortgage off from a good many farms. 
Our cream is taken to the cooperative creamery, and 
when our cows get old we sell 'em for beef, and there's 
a rendering company that will pay us something for 
our sick cows. The meat of those sick cows ain't sup- 
posed to be eaten, but I guess some of it gets mixed in 
with good meat and goes where it hadn't ought to go. 

"Of course not everybody's prosperous. Some owe 
money that they can't pay and drop behind a little 
every year. When they get going that way they're 



92 Highways and Byways of New England 

pretty sure to have a slide into bankruptcy. The 
people they owe get uneasy. If a man is gaining and 
going up it's all right, but if he's going down it's all 
wrong. 

"One cause of failures is this auto business. A man 
working for a salary in such a place as Burlington over 
here on the mainland will have a little home that's 
paid for and he's quite comfortably fixed. But he 
concludes that he's got to have an auto to keep up with 
the procession. So he mortgages his place and buys 
one. Then he has to take a day off here and a day off 
there to make trips in his new machine. By and by his 
employer says, 'Well, I'll have to look for another feller 
to fill this man's place;' and he loses his job. In town 
and country both there's a good many people with autos 
who wish they had their money back. It ain't the first 
cost that counts. It's the wear and tear and the expense 
for ensilage — no, that ain't the word. I mean gasolene. 
It balked me just for the second. My mind don't work 
as good as it used to. 

"Have you noticed our apple orchards.'' This is a 
great region for apples, but the tent caterpillars and 
little green forest worm are raising the mischief with the 
trees. The leaves are about all gone and the orchards 
look as if a fire had been through 'em. They've mostly 
turned into butterflies now and quit eating, but they've 
left their mark and they're goin' to play the trees out. 

"The railroad has built causeways to get on and oflF 
the island, and we go across in teams at the sandbar 



On the Shores of Lake Champlain 93 

bridge. We've got pretty good connections with the 
rest of the world except at the end of winter. Then, 
after the ice gets rotten enough to break up, it will 
sometimes shove, and the ice and floodwood will be 
piled up on the causeway at the bridge in such masses 
that the road is blocked for three weeks. Before the 
bridge was built we would ford the bar in the spring 
when the water was so high that the horse had to wade 
for a mile, and we'd put our feet on the dashboard to 
keep 'em dry. I didn't want to be driving through after 
dark very much. If you got to one side a little it was 
dangerous. In summer I've been across when the water 
was so low that I could wade it with such a pair of 
boots on as I'm wearing now. 

"Most every one is rigged out with shoes these days, 
but I ain't ashamed to have anybody know that I 
wear boots. People say to me, 'Why, you wear boots 
yet!' and I say, 'Yes, I was born with boots on.' 

"I like 'em better than shoes. They're handier. I 
can't get down to lace up shoes, and besides if you wear 
shoes on a farm some obstruction is getting into 'em 
every little while, and the thistles prick through your 
pantlegs. But I don't know as I've seen anybody 
who's stuck to boots as I have, and there's only one 
place in Burlington where they can be got. Every one 
wore 'em in old times. Even the girls wore 'em by 
spells going to school through the snow in winter and 
the slush in spring. 

"Once a year a shoemaker, on his rounds about the 



94 Highways and Byways of New England 

neighborhood, would move into a room of our house 
and make boots for the whole family. We had one 
shoemaker here in town who couldn't be beat in New 
York City, and he had some very stylish customers 
who lived large places at a distance — fellers that looked 
just as if they'd come out of a bandbox. He'd fit 'em 
with boots that were so tight they'd break three or four 
pairs of galluses tryin' to get 'em on. 

"We had a good deal of Canadian help in summer. 
Men would drive down from Canada in a two-wheeled 
cart drawn by one horse. There'd be six or eight of 
'em standing up or sitting around on the edges of the 
cart. They'd get along any way to reach the States 
and work four or five weeks for a dollar a day. Now 
we have to pay two dollars a day. You pretty near 
have to pay a man if you stop him to inquire if he'll 
work for you. They're educated to get as big prices 
as they can and give as little as possible in return. We 
used to go out and in half an hour hire half a dozen men. 
Now you can't hire one man in half a dozen days. The 
laboring day was calculated from sunrise to sundown. 
At present, if you get a man out before seven o'clock 
you have to pull him out, but we expect him to keep at 
his work more steadily than if his hours were longer; 
and there ain't no use talking — a feller can't hold out 
from sunrise to sundown in a long summer day and do 
good work. The men had to have a lunch in the middle 
of the morning, and again in the middle of the after- 
noon. I've carried many a lunch to the mowing field 



On the Shores of Lake Champlain 95 

when I was a boy. The food was put into a market 
basket or wooden pail together with a bottle of liquor 
and a couple of tumblers. Toward ten o'clock in the 
morning a worker would sit down and eat a doughnut 
and a good slice of bread buttered and doubled up, and 
drink a tumbler of liquor. That would hold him to- 
gether until dinner time. Now and then there was hot 
biscuit for lunch and perhaps cake. 

"Mowing was done with scythes. All the men 
would mow in the morning until the dew got off. 
There'd be six or seven of 'em, and at the end of a 
swath they'd stop and whet their scythes and tell a 
story or two and have a laugh before they went on. 
We had more fun then working than we do now. Some 
of the men mowed all day, but most of 'em quit mowing 
after a while to get the hay dry and into the barn. It 
was quite a job to spread out the swaths that were left 
by the mowers. Furthermore all the hay had to be 
raked by hand. While I was a youngster they sent me 
ahead to rake the first swath. Two fellers raking on 
each side completed what was called a windrow, and 
the hay in the windrows had to be bunched up and 
pitched onto the two-wheeled ox-carts. 

"Everybody used to have oxen, but now I don't 
know of a yoke of oxen in town. An ox-team will do lots 
of work if properly managed. It will do as much 
ploughing as a span of horses. But if you use the gad 
too much and get your oxen vexed and they don't know 
what to do they'll be mean same as a balky horse. 



96 Highways and Byways of New England 

Some of our horses and cattle are superior to the human 
animals that own 'em. I saw a man pounding a horse 
the other day, and I said to myself, 'If I was that horse 
I'd show the feller how the calks were fastened on my 
shoes,' and It would have been serving him right. 

"Before the railroads got so numerous there used to 
be a great deal of traffic on the lake. The water was 
dotted with schooners and sloops up to twenty-five 
years ago. You couldn't look out on the lake without 
seeing ten or a dozen of 'em. Now we don't see one a 
week. Most of the crossing at the ferries was done In 
what we called old scow boats. They was rigged with 
a big sail. We get some heavy waves on the broad part 
of the lake, and I've even known one of those flat- 
bottomed scow boats to be upset. 

"Most of our teaming in winter was done on the Ice. 
The Ice made a good road, and the horses would slide 
right along. The lake froze from shore to shore, but 
here where It is so wide there was only crossing for a 
few days or weeks, however cold the season. Horses 
often broke through, but they seldom drowned. If a 
man was alone and his horses went in he'd have to 
wait for help, and about all he could do was to keep the 
horses' heads up. When a man on shore heard any one 
calling and saw that a team was in trouble he'd hitch 
up, put a plank In his cutter, and go to the rescue. 
Sometimes those would come who were so scairt that 
they were worse than no one at all. If you could get 
the horses' for'ard feet up on the ice they'd usually 



On the Shores of Lake Champlain 97 

struggle out themselves. Often we'd choke 'em a little 
and get 'em strangled to make 'em throw themselves 
out. But if the ice was rotten or springy they were 
apt to slip back in. The Ice was weak around the reefs, 
and we would keep away from them. There ain't but 
very little teaming now, and I didn't hear of only two 
teams getting in last winter. 

"When I was a boy 'twas a main travelled road 
through here. That made quite a market for the hotels, 
and there was lots of doings at the corners. Travellers 
couldn't get by a hotel without stopping for a drink. 
They had to have it in winter to get warmed up on, 
and in summer to get cooled off on. They drank gin 
or brandy or whatever their thirst called for, but most 
of what was known as 'new rum.' That was a little 
cheaper than the other kinds of liquor, and the stores 
bought it by the puncheon, and people bought it by 
the jugful. Everybody drank. Even the minister 
wasn't afraid to tip the tumbler. 

"I can recollect long strings of horses from Canada 
going through here to be sold every winter. Usually 
there'd be twenty or thirty horses in a string, but some- 
times there was so many they'd reach for pretty near 
half a mile. Their halters was tied to a rope that 
extended from the leader to the last horse. A man rode 
the leader, and several boys were scattered along on 
the horses, and a sleigh follered behind. 

"You notice we have a good many zigzag rail fences 
around our fields, but we don't make any new fences 



98 Highways and Byways of New England 

of that sort. Rails are getting scarce nowadays. 
They're split out of cedar, and there ain't much cedar 
growing. It's a bother even to get enough cedar posts 
for wire fences. Every field large and small used to be 
fenced, and we had to keep a good fence along the 
road because people let their cattle run and feed In the 
highways. There'd be gates across the roads In some 
places that travellers had to open and shut. On either 
side of the rail fences at the angles a stake was driven 
down, and a short board with holes bored In it was 
slipped over the ends of each pair of stakes to hold 'em 
in place, and a top rail rested on this cap. 

"We generally made our hog pasture fence of boards. 
Hogs will root under most any fence, and they'll 
squeeze pretty hard on a board when they get started. 
Those old-time hogs was great runners. Now what 
we call a hog decent to be e't is so fat he can't do much 
running. But I've seen hogs that we wanted to 
butcher get away and run all over the garden. We'd 
set the dog onto 'em to help tire 'em out so we could 
ketch 'em. Once a Frenchman who was working for us 
grabbed hold of a hog by the ear when it started to run 
and got right on Its back. But It ran through a goose- 
berry bush. You know what those are. They've got 
thorns on 'em. The hog came out first best and the man 
got well scratched. He let go and talked all kinds of 
language for a short time. 

"A poor line fence makes trouble for you unless you 
have a pretty good lot of philosophy to fall back on. 




At work in the garden 



On the Shores of Lake Champlain 99 

People generally cal'erate to look after their fences now, 
but In earlier days they often neglected 'em, and their 
cows or sheep or horses would do damage on their 
neighbors' premises. That stirred up feeling, and there 
was jawing and cursing and perhaps a fight. Some 
never got over it. Such affairs made work for the 
lawyers. 

*'We always had a lawyer In town ever since I was 
knee high to a johnnycake until about thirty years 
ago. If he saw a little disturbance starting between 
neighbors he'd work on the one that he thought would 
crowd the most so as to get a fee out of the row. While 
we had lawyers there was always lots of quarrelling, 
but when they quit doing business here It cured the 
thing right up. 

"The cases were tried on the Island, and PIxley, the 
constable, had to collect the juries. One day I see his 
old sorrel mare comin' up the road, and I knew, just as 
well as if he had telephoned, that he was goin' to sum- 
mon me for a little petty suit. So I went in and sat 
down in my shirtsleeves with my boots off and my feet 
on the stove hearth and an old tippet round my throat 
as If I was played out. PIxley stopped and come In, 
but I couldn't talk out loud. All my answering was 
done by whispering or nodding. Well, I didn't lie, but 
you might just as well call it that. 

"'I declare!' PIxley said, 'you got an awful cold,' 
and he went off to look for some one else. 

"By and by I hitched up and went to see the case 



lOO Highways and Byways of New England 

tried. I left my horse under the store shed and walked 
into court. The constable saw I'd tricked him, and he 
said, 'Next time I go after you you'll come even if I 
have to take you right out of bed.' 

"'Pixley,' I said, 'you ain't big enough.' 

"We lived rather more than two miles from the 
church, and a load of us would drive there to meeting 
in a three-seated wagon. The church pews were regular 
pens. If we had 'em in a barn we'd call 'em box stalls. 
The walls were so high that when I was a little shaver 
and wanted to make faces at any other boy or girl I had 
to stand up on the seat to look over. The pews had 
doors and the last person in had to turn a button to 
keep the door shut. There were no cushions — nothing 
but the bare boards, unless you carried a shawl or some- 
thing to sit on. 

The minister preached a sermon in the morning, and 
then he had to give us another in the afternoon, and 
there wa'n't hardly a person in a hundred could digest 
what there was in one. When those old-fashioned 
ministers preached a sermon they couldn't usually get 
along without bringin' in about hell fire two or three 
times. That would scare some, but others would have 
to laugh right in church, and people used to joke on 
the subject. If a man said: 'I ain't goin' to winter 
here. I'm goin' to get where it's warmer;' some one 
else would say, 'Well, you wait a little while and you'll 
be where it's warmer.' 

"Between the two services there was time for Sunday- 



On the Shores of Lake Champlain loi 

school and lunch. The people who came from a dis- 
tance ate their cake and cheese and whatever else they 
brought in the vestibule or right in the pews, but the 
children would perhaps take a handful of the food and 
go outdoors to eat. 

"We kept our minister for fifty years. He could 
have got four or five times what we paid, but he said he 
was one of us and wouldn't leave for the big offerings. 
For funeral sermons or anything of that kind he was 
in demand all around. He was one of the flowery kind, 
and even if the dead person had been mean and done 
bad things he'd smooth it over, or if the feller had never 
amounted to anything the preacher would make him 
out to be quite a man, and that caused the man's friends 
like the preacher better than ever. He'd fix it so nice in 
speaking about the deceased in the funeral sermon that 
though parties were there who'd been quarrelling with 
the departed tears would start from their eyes just the 
same. Theminister lived to be a very old man, and itwas 
only a few years ago he had the sickness that upset him, 

"The island used to be full of children, but the young 
people as they grew up went West, and they went South, 
and they went to the towns. Some have probably done 
a good deal better than if they'd stayed, and yet I think 
the majority would have been fully as independent and 
enjoyed themselves more if they'd continued to live on 
the farms here." 

Another acquaintance who furnished me with con- 
siderable information was an elderly French fisherman 



I02 Highways and Byways of New England 

whose home was a queer little shack in some bushes 
near the shore. The structure was about six by eight 
feet with a tarred paper roof. Near by was a garden in 
which the fisherman raised a few vegetables, and just 
over an adjacent fence was an apple orchard much 
devastated by worms. 

"I had to kill them worms here all day one spell," he 
said. "They're kind of a brown color and an inch and a 
half long, and I guess they got a thousand legs on 'em. 
They crawled everywhere. I'd see 'em as I was goin' 
along the road, and I'd step on 'em. They're a mean 
thing, but now they've chawed and gone away. People 
say they change into butterflies, but I don't know 
whether they do or not." 

While we were chatting rain began to fall, and the 
man invited me into his hut. I could just stand up 
under the ridge. The walls and roof boards were pasted 
over with wallpaper. A bed was built in across the 
back, and I sat down on that. In the corner at one side 
of the door was a tiny stove tawny with rust, and near 
it was a little pile of firewood and a chair. There was 
a shelf full of crockery, and there were fishlines, a gun, 
a lantern, a mirror, and a clock that ticked loudly. 
Light was admitted through two small sliding windows 
under the eaves. The man said that he prepared for 
winter by banking up around the outside with dirt to 
the bottom of the windows. A trap door in the floor 
allowed him to reach down into a cellar hole where he 
kept his potatoes, fresh meat, bread, milk, and butter. 




A rugged hit of shore 



On the Shores of Lake Champlain 103 

Presently" a boy from a neighboring house came in 
and occupied the chair. The man sat on a box beside 
the stove. He had started a fire, for the day was chilly, 
and the stove drew the air in through Its damper with 
noisy vigor. "Come, don't growl too hard," the fisher- 
man admonished. 

Then he turned to me and said: "I feel kind o' 
sleepy. A friend who's got a farm up the lane was 
callin' on me last night. 'Bout ten o'clock he began 
to say, 'Well, I guess I'll go home,' but It was after 
midnight when he left. I was sorry for his wife. She 
always sets up till he comes In. He spent the whole 
time here talkin' about himself — stuck to that one sub- 
ject like a puppy to a root — and it's just the same every 
call he makes on me. According to his tell he could do 
more work than a man when he was thirteen, but I've 
never seen him exerting himself much." 

"This rain will give me another chance to pick night 
crawlers," the boy remarked. 

"What are those?" I asked. 

"Some call 'em angleworms," he replied. "We had a 
good rain yesterday, but before that there was a long 
dry spell, and you could dig for an hour and not get 
enough crawlers to fish half a day. But last night I got 
a quart In ten minutes. They always come out after 
dark when the ground is wet, and you can begin to pick 
by eight o'clock on the road or any land that ain't 
covered with growing things. The garden is the best 
place. We go after 'em with a lantern and a can. They 



104 Highways and Byways of New England 

have about an inch still in their hole, and you've got 
to grab quick or they crawl back in. So we walk careful 
and take care not to jar the ground and scare 'em. We 
can sell 'em for from twenty-five cents to fifty cents a 
quart to the campers. They go like hotcakes. 

"The campers are always wantin' bait. After harvest 
we get crickets for 'em. We find the crickets under the 
stones. Sometimes we pick grasshoppers and sell 'em 
to the campers at fifty cents a hundred. They'd rather 
have those than any flies they can buy in the stores." 

"White grubs are great bait for bass," the fisherman 
affirmed. "Once in a while I go in the swamps after 
little green frogs. By gol! it's quite a job. They're 
lively hoppers, and they're such a size and color that 
you got to keep your nose almost on the ground to see 
'em. The campers are glad to get 'em at three cents 
apiece. 

"There's some big fish in the lake. I've known 
pickerel to weigh twenty pounds, and I've helped ketch 
a sturgeon that was over two yards long. You get a 
sturgeon like that in spawning time and just the spawn 
is worth thirty-five or forty dollars. Do you see that 
big strong hook hangin' on the wall.'' It's much as 
three feet long, handle and all. I use that when I 
ketch a fish that's too large for my line. If I once hook 
him under the chop with that he has to do some kickin' 
to get away. He's got to come whether he wants to or 
not." 

"Sturgeon meat is so oily it ain't fit to eat," the boy 



On the Shores of Lake Champlain 105 

said. "I like hornpouts 'bout as well as any fish. A 
hornpout is all meat after you take the backbone out. 
Some of 'em weigh two pounds. I don't care for eels. 
They look too much like snakes. They'd have to be 
parboiled and cooked pretty darn nice for me to eat, 
and then I shouldn't want to know what they was. 
Did you ever notice that you have no luck ketchin' 
fish when it's thunderin' around.'' Brook trout will be 
bitin' awful nice, and if it starts to thunder they'll stop 
right off." 

"You look out of the door," the fisherman said to 
me, "and you can see down toward the water a fishin' 
shanty such as is used a good deal on the lake in winter. 
It's nearly as large as this house of mine. We can put 
it on a sled and go anywhere we want to with it. If the 
fish don't bite in one place we go to another. Most 
generally there are three holes in the bottom of a shanty, 
and right under each hole we chop through the ice so 
three fellers can fish. 

"I didn't build this house, and I haven't always had 
it here since I owned it. Golly, no! It's been moved 
over a hundred times, I guess. Old Man Akey had it 
for his fishing camp just before I bought it, and there 
was one while that eight people lived in it. The old 
man's son, Billy, had put up a tent near his father's 
camp and was stayin' in it with his wife and kid. One 
night there was a storm with thunder and lightning and 
the rain poured down in sheets. The wind got to be 
such a gale that it was too much for the tent, and it 



io6 Highways and Byways of New England 

blowed the whole business off into the lake about 
twelve o'clock at night. 'Fore Billy and his family 
could crawl into this shanty they was wet through. The 
whole party slept in it for the next two weeks. Old 
Man Akey and his wife and baby had the bunk you're 
settin' on. Billy and his wife and baby were up above 
in another bunk, and two big strapping boys slept on 
the floor with their feet sticking outside through the 
door. The shanty was just as full as an egg, as the 
feller says." 

While I was on Grand Isle I explored to some extent 
both its mild eastern shore and the bold bluffs with 
which it fronts the broad expanse of the lake to the 
west. The latter water-front was particularly delight- 
ful. Here was a succession of outreaching points 
against whose craggy cliffs the crested waves crash 
when the wind is high, and when the day is quiet the 
ripples dance and sing at the base of the rocks. The 
crags are crowned with dark-foliaged cedars, and 
between the points are rounded coves, pleasantly 
secluded, with shelving beaches of pebbles or sand. My 
visit to this part of the island was made on a doubtful 
day when one misty shower followed close on the heels 
of another with occasional intervals when the sunshine 
shimmered faintly through the clouds. I had a wide 
view over the gray waters of the lake, alternately 
darkling and brightening in the shifting light, and there 
were islands — dusky near ones and hazy distant ones, — 
and on the far shore were the beautiful Adirondacks, 



On the Shores of Lake Champlain 107 

now obscured by a thin veil of rain, and then reveahng 
themselves height piled on height, growing more dreamy 
and evanescent in the distance till they melted into the 

sky. 

Notes.— Not far from where I sojourned is Burlington, Vermont's 
largest city, on steep rising ground fronting the lake. Here Ethan 
Allen, the hero of Ticonderoga, is buried in Greenmount Cemetery. 
The site of the house where he spent his last years is now Ethan 
Allen Park. Rock Dunder out in the lake was mistaken by the 
British for a United States vessel in 1812 and was peppered with 

shot. 

The Battle of Lake Champlain between the British and Yankee 
fleets was fought one September morning in 1814 west of Grand Isle 
near Plattsburg, New York. Both fleets were almost battered to 
pieces, and, though the British were defeated, their vessels got away 
because the victors had not a mast left fit to carry a sail and were 
unable to follow. 

The lake is a favorite summer resort, and is noted for its superb 
views and rare historic associations. The first white man to see it 
was the explorer whose name it bears. He visited it in a canoe in 

1609. 

The most delightful way to see the lake is to voyage on one of the 
steamers which calls at the important ports and enables the traveller 
to observe the various points of scenic beauty. The highways of 
the region include some gravel and some macadam, but you cannot 
depend on anything better than fair country roads. 



VI 



THE VILLAGE OF THE SEVEN TAVERNS 

IT is a retired little hamlet among the Vermont hills, 
and the seven taverns, though the buildings still 
stand, are taverns no longer. The days when they 
furnished shelter and conviviality to the public date 
back to the time when stage-coaches were the chief 
means of conveyance for travellers. Then the village 
was on a main turnpike — a private road with toll- 
houses at frequent intervals — and the region was 
thickly settled for a farming community. Now only a 
handful of the people remain, and the traffic which 
formerly enlivened the highway passes on the rail- 
road through the depths of a wooded valley a mile 
away. 

One of the old taverns was my stopping-place. It 
was a substantial building that had not been much 
changed since it was erected. The ceilings were low, 
and the doors were quaintly panelled and had antique 
hinges and latches. There was a big vacant dining- 
room, and a bar-room with a counter and shelves for 
liquors, and in the upper story was a spacious spring- 
floor ballroom. The structure was not In the best of 
repair, and the floor boards were apt to teeter beneath 
one's tread. In heavy rains pans had to be set here and 




Washing-day 



The Village of the Seven Taverns 109 

there In the kitchen to catch streams that found pas- 
sage through the rear roof. 

At the time of my visit in early autumn the country 
around was particularly charming. Touches of color 
showed in the foliage, the clusters on the wild grape- 
vines had begun to turn purple, and the waysides were 
aglow with goldenrod. Up and down the steep hills 
crept the roads with many a graceful curve; and 
staggering board fences, patched and weather-stained 
and lichened, separated the highways from the scrubby 
pastures and irregular tracts of mowing-land. Now and 
then in my walks I came on a deserted home with 
broken windows, loosening clapboards, and a grassy 
dooryard long a stranger to the daily tread of human 
feet. Many of the old houses had disappeared alto- 
gether, and nought marked their sites but bushy cellar 
holes. Often when the house was gone, or a complete 
ruin, the barn was still in use. It perhaps had lost its 
doors and sagged sideways, but it was repaired enough 
to afford shelter for some of the thin weedy hay from 
the wornout fields. 

My first day in the region was Sunday, and after 
breakfast I sat down on the piazza that ran the whole 
length of the tavern front. A typical Sabbath quiet 
pervaded the village. To be sure the roosters in the 
various backyards were stridently challenging each 
other, and I could hear the cawing of crows and the 
faint far-off tinkle of cow-bells on the big hills that 
mounded around; but human activity had well nigh 



no Highways and Byways of New England 

ceased. The hamlet's only two places of business, a 
brick store and a blacksmith's shop, were shut, and I 
observed no one working except a man washing a 
buggy in the doorway of the tavern barn. The villagers 
have a companionable way of shouting a greeting to 
such passers on the road as are known to them and when 
a man in overalls came plodding along the highway the 
buggy-washer called out to him, "Hello, Tom, did my 
cow trouble you with her noise last night?" 

Tom turned aside from the roadway, took his pipe 
from his mouth and remarked: "I never wake up till 
the alarm goes oif in the morning, no matter what 
noises there are around. Say, I gorry, you could hitch 
that cow to my bed five minutes after I've crawled in, 
and she could beller as much as she pleased, and 'twould 
never wake me. I tell you, Holt, you take a good honest 
man that works hard all day and eats three square 
meals, he can sleep like a hog all night." 

"You don't mean 'sleep like a hog,'" Holt said. 
"You mean 'sleep like a man.'" 

"Well, I don't know," Tom responded, "I expect I'm 
half hog; feel them brustles." 

He took off his hat and lowered his close-cropped 
head for inspection; and Holt after running his fingers 
over the other's hair agreed as to its stiffness. 

Pretty soon Tom moved on, and I made some inquiry 
of Holt about a big, square, vacant house across the 
road. "I'll go in and ask Ma," was his response. 

He left his work and I followed him into the house. 



The Village of the Seven Taverns iii 

"Ma" was Mrs. Stowell, m^ landlady. She was not 
Holt's mother, but an elderly relation, and he always 
referred to her any questions concerning the past. 
"That house has been empty for several years now," 
she said. "The last person who lived in it was an old 
lady who stayed there all alone. I used to enjoy calling 
on her, she kept everything so neat, and no matter how 
early you'd go over in the morning her hair was fixed 
in waves as nice as could be. It was very pleasant to 
look across and see that front room lit up in the evening. 
She was always busy, and you'd think from the way 
she worked that she had a large family. Why, she'd 
get up at daylight Monday, and yet have so much to do 
around the house that she wouldn't get her washing out 
till four in the afternoon." 

My landlady had in her hand a stick with a leather 
flap on the end, and as she talked she moved about 
spying out the flies and smiting them with the flap. "I 
have screens everywhere," she said, "but the flies 
manage to get in some way or other," 

"What did people do before they had screens.^" 
I asked. 

"I often think of that," she replied. "There was no 
such thing when I was young; but we had thick, green 
paper curtains, and we'd roll them down to darken the 
house, and then we'd break some small limbs off the 
maple trees in the yard and brush the flies out." 

On a bare hill a short distance up the road stood a 
great white barn of a church, but service was only held 



112 Highways and Byways of New England 

once a month and attracted few attendants. It is a 
spireless structure built in 1787 and is even now prac- 
tically what it was in the beginning. Inside you find 
the old square pews with seats on three sides, and the 
high pulpit overhung by a sounding-board and having 
the deacon's seat against the front below like a little 
cage. 

The older people can remember when every Sunday 
the meeting-house was full, and how the worshippers 
"would sing for all they was worth." A local resident 
named Devens whom I found on Sunday afternoon 
loitering in the cemetery which adjoined the churchyard 
with a companion he called Todd, explained the present 
situation by saying, "I'd rather take my rod and box 
of worms and go sit down side of the river than hear 
the best minister that ever was. About the only persons 
that go to hear the preachers nowadays are a few of the 
women and children with nothing else to do; and nine- 
tenths of the women are there just to show their new 
clothes. Let a woman get a new hat or coat, and she's 
at church the next Sunday, sure. 

"A good many men used to go hunting on Sunday; 
but there's a law which says you mustn't, and lately 
they've begun to enforce It. So you're liable to be 
gobbled If you carry your gun that day. It's a law 
made for rich people. They've got leisure to hunt when 
they please, but Sunday Is the only chance for poor 
men. Perhaps, though, those that work all the week 
ought to rest on Sunday, and now they've got to. When 




A colonial pulpit 



The Village of the Seven Taverns 113 

I was a boy we never thought of such a thing as Sunday 
hunting or fishing. No, sir! no, sir! We all went to 
meeting and Sunday-school and read the Bible — and it 
was a long day. The kids now spend it quite different. 
If they read anything it's these Wild West novels, and 
on Monday they go and shoot somebody. 

"The meeting-house was built by the town, and four 
gallons of rum were voted to be served at the raising. 
That was a time when every one drank, and you 
couldn't have any sociability without rum. But they 
had distilled liquor then, and if a man got drunk on it 
his head wa'n't bigger'n a bushel basket next morning. 
It's all made of drugs now." 

"Considerable cider brandy was distilled at one 
time right here in our village," Todd said. "This used 
to be a lively place then with all its taverns and other 
business; but when the railroad was built about 1850 
that give us a setback." 

"Yes," Devens commented, "the railroad did away 
with the four-horse coaches that passed through here. 
I can remember 'em. They was loaded right down with 
passengers and there was trunks piled way up behind — 
all they could get on. In those days, too, every farmer 
would go down to Boston once or twice a year with a 
load of produce drawn by a yoke of oxen or perhaps 
two yoke. They'd have some dead pork and a little of 
one thing and another to make up the load and usually 
went late in the fall after it was cold enough to freeze up 
the meat. A whole string of fellows would travel to- 



114 Highways and Byways of New England 

gether, and when they stopped at the taverns they'd 
treat." 

"You recollect Old Bailey, don't you?" Todd said. 
"He drew for the stores and was going back and forth 
all the time. It took him a fortnight to make a trip. 
He had a six-horse team and put on a ton to a horse 
in his canvas-topped wagon." 

"Why, good Lord!" Devens exclaimed, "Uncle 
Luke White drove hogs to Boston for years. But It 
didn't take much gumption to drive hogs then; for 
they grazed In the pastures and was used to bein' out- 
doors. Once In a while a man would drive turkeys to 
Boston. He had to stop when it was dark whether he 
wanted to or not because the turkeys would go up in the 
trees to roost." 

"Speakin' of the times when the railroad was built 
reminds me of the Lawrence boys," Todd said. "They 
was livin' up at Hardscrabble, and the railroad went 
across their property. The damages they got was too 
small to suit 'em, and the old woman went and greased 
the rails. That bothered the trains some, but It didn't 
stop their running and then the boys started to raise 
hog by piling ties on the track. So the railroad sent 
officers to arrest 'em. The boys got warning somehow 
and come down here, forty miles. That was a long way 
In those days; but they were caught and fined just the 
same." 

Not far from where we sat were several white stones 
decorated with a hand pointing upward. I asked some 



The Village of the Seven Taverns 115 

question about them and was told that they were 
erected by a man named Leverett Lowell In memory of 
his wives. One after another he lost four and bought 
a stone for each of exactly the same pattern. ''His 
own stone stands at the end of the row," Todd remarked, 
"and there's a motto on it — 'at rest' — kind o' appro- 
priate, ain't it?" 

"You know he married a fifth time," Devens said, 
— "took old Mother Houghton. She was a holy terror. 
Her former husband was a big burly saloon keeper, but 
in spite of his size, when he got drunk she'd throw him 
into a closet and keep him there until he was sober. 
She and Lowell didn't agree very well and they got a 
divorce; and then he wanted to marry again — the old 
crank — though he was well along in years and so fat 
and helpless that when he drove anywhere they had to 
run with a chair for him to step on getting In and out of 
the wagon. Yes, and the person he picked out was a 
little young girl only sixteen or seventeen years old. 
But his own children wouldn't let him make that 
match." 

"There's a tomb up to Cuttlngvllle you ought to 
see," Wilson said to me. " It cost seventy-five thousand 
dollars and Is the burial place of a family of four — a man 
and wife and their two children. The wife and children 
each has a life size bust In the tomb, and there are 
mirrors so set that the busts are repeated and look as 
if they extended In long rows way off Into the distance 
till they get so small you can't see 'em. The man him- 



Il6 Highways and Byways of New England 

self is carved in a full figure, which is dovetailed into a 
step outside. He's got his hat in his hand and seems 
to be just going in; and the work is done so natural 
you can even see the stitches in his buttonholes." 

"But let me tell you," Devens said, "do you 'spose 
that man's gone to heaven.'* He had a poor sister that 
was on the town there; and he wouldn't help her 
because he claimed she'd had just as good a chance to 
make money as he had." 

"He was a mean cuss," Todd commented. "I'd like 
to know what his heart was like." 

"Lots of people in this world ain't got no heart," the 
other declared — "nothing but a gizzard and a mighty 
small one at that." 

"There's a number of interesting stones in this old 
cemetery of ours that I'd like to show you," Todd said, 
turning to me. 

He rose and led the way down the hill a little where 
he called my attention to the following inscription : 

In MEMORY of Mifs. 

EUNICE PAIN who Died 

June loth 1805 in the i6th 

year of her age 

Behold & read a mournfuU fate 

Two lovers were fincere 

And one is left without a mate, 

The other flumbers here. 



The Village of the Seven Taverns 117 

I asked for the details of this pathetic romance, but 
my guide said, neither he nor any of the villagers knew 
more than was on the stone. 

Another unusual inscription was — 

In Memory of Mr. Jofiah White 

th 

who Died Sep'' i^^ 1806 in the 96 

year of his age 

The descendants of Jofiah White at his death 

Children 15, Grand Children 160, Grate grand 

Children 211. Children Deceas'd 2, Grand Children 

Deceas'd 26, grate grand children Deceas'd 35 

"Some of the stones have the cost marked at the 
bottom," my companion said. "Here's one dated 1808, 
and this line of print way down level with the ground 
reads: * Price 29 Dollars & 96 Cents.' Notice, too, the 
coffin chiseled up above with the initials of the man who 
is buried here cut on the lid. 

"Just beyond Is the grave of an ancestor of mine who 
was the first male child born In the settlement. That 
distinction entitled him to a grant of land, and he was 
given a piece of swamp down by the river, full of logs 
and trash left by the floods. 'Twa'n't good for any- 
thing. He couldn't sell It, and when he came of age he 
swapped It for a gun. 

"The stone with the most curious Inscription that 
ever was in the burying-ground has been stolen. I 



Ii8 Highways and Byways of New England 

remember exactly how it looked. It was an old slate 
stone of medium size, and I could name a dozen other 
persons who knew it as well as I did. The verse was — 

'Here lays our darling baby boy, 
He neither screams nor hollers; 
He lived with us just twenty days 
And cost us forty dollars.' 

"You had to push down the grass to read the last 
lines. One time they had a bee here to straighten up 
the stones. I was away, but when I got back they told 
me that stone I been speakin' of didn't seem to be there. 
I offered to bet I could go right to the spot, for I had 
been to read that verse a hundred times — I thought it 
was funny. The stone was gone, though, sure enough, 
and I couldn't find it, though I looked with all the eyes 
I've got." 

Later in the afternoon I called at the home of an old 
resident of the region named Slade. He was in the 
kitchen eating his dinner at a coverless table that 
was pushed back against the wall. His wife was an 
invalid and lay on a disheveled bed in an alcove beyond 
the stove. Mr. Slade had his coat oif, and his shirt 
sleeves were rolled up to the elbow. "My wife was one 
of them regular go-ahead women before she was took 
sick," he said, chewing away meditatively. "That 
was seventeen years ago, and I've had to get my own 
grub ever since." 

The aspect of the room was quite suggestive of a 



The Village of the Seven Taverns 119 

man's housekeeping. The stove was brown with rust, the 
walls and ceiling were dingy, and there was an amazing 
amount of litter. He evidently put things down and 
piled them up wherever it came handy. When he 
finished eating, he went and sat down in a rocking- 
chair; but his wife routed him out of it. "Get up, 
Edward," she ordered, "and let the man have that 
chair. I want him to sit there where I can see him, and 
if he looks like a good honest man I'll talk to him." 

I changed places with Mr. Slade, and she said, "I 
suppose when you go away you'll be tellin' a long 
rigmarole about what sort of people you met here; and, 
my dear boy, I want to advise you to take all the lazy 
trollops and the smart ones and mix 'em together so as 
to get kind of an average that'll be fair to us." 

Now and then Mrs. Slade groaned or sighed, or asked 
her husband to bring her a drink of water, or to help 
her to change her position. Once she suddenly ad- 
dressed him with the query, "Can I believe a word I 
hear.?" 

"What are you referating to.?" he inquired. 

"I understand," she said, "that since Lew Miller 
has died the people where he was staying have brought 
in a bill to comb all that was left of his property; and 
they've been havin' five dollars a week right along for 
takin' care of him, and they've got him to thank for 
all the lace curtains and fine carpets that are in the 
house." 

After this topic had been discussed Mr. Slade re- 



I20 Highways and Byways of New England 

marked, "They say there's a bear over at Chester 
playing 'possum around. Some one found several calf 
pelts all cleaned out and rolled up just the way bears 
leave 'em, and he saw the bear, too. 'Twa'n't an hour 
before fifty men was on the spot, but they didn't have 
a chance to do any shootin'. Bears will get off terribly. 
It's a wonder the way they make themselves scarce. 
They'll slip out of sight, and even if you foller their 
tracks for days they'll get off." 

"Ed," Mrs. Slade said, "perhaps it was a bear you 
saw when you was goin' down to the station the other 
night with your lantern." She turned to me and added, 
"Yes, he saw suthin' and it frightened him so he hol- 
lered like a loon." 

"I was squawkin' at the critter — I wa'n't frightened," 
Mr. Slade asserted. 

"I guess you was," she said. "I wouldn't be a mite 
surprised if you was scared right into your boots." 

"It was that high," Mr. Slade explained, holding his 
hand about two feet from the floor, "and light colored. 
I stopped and It stood a rod or such a matter away 
looking at me, and then, by gorry, I yapped at it and 
it ran off as if the devil was after it." 

"Edward," Mrs. Slade said. 

"What's up now.?" he asked. 

"If you don't open the door and let in some air I 
shall faint away," was the reply. 

He opened the door. "Say Ed," the invalid observed 
as he returned to his seat. 




Capturing bees 



The Village of the Seven Taverns 121 

"What shall I say?" was his response. 

"You remember Herbert Scott's wife?" she re- 
sumed. "I ain't so bad to take care of as she was, 
ami?" 

"Nowhere near," Mr. Slade declared, reassuringly, 
and she said, "They never any of Herb's family had an 
ache or a pain but that old Mother Slade must go to 
them, night or day; and yet I don't s'pose they care a 
cob about my sickness. Herb's wife was an awful 
nervous thing, and in that long sick spell of hers, if you 
give her a drink of water and let fall two drops of it on 
her she'd have a chill and send for the doctor. When 
she was well she'd spend a good share of her time sitting 
in front of a looking-glass making up faces to see how 
bad she could look." 

"Oh, no," Mr. Slade objected, "Mamy wa'n't seein' 
how bad she could look. She was just makin' fancy 
faces." 

"She wanted to appear like city folks," Mrs. Slade 
continued. "But let me tell you — city people don't 
make such a fuss about their expression, and eating 
with a fork and all the other little polite tricks. I've 
been in the city as much as once and a half, and I know." 

"Here comes Hattie and Jim," Mr. Slade said, glanc- 
ing out of the window. "They are our daughter and 
her husband," he explained to me. 

With them were several of their children, the oldest 
a red-headed fourteen year old boy, who at once began 
a friendly squabble with his grandfather. "Jimmy has 



122 Highways and Byways of New England 

been away for three weeks," his mother said, "and 
since he's got back, I'll be plagued if he can come into 
this house without pickin' a row with the old man." 

"My daughter here is slim and don't look very 
strong," Mrs. Slade said; "but she's tough, and she 
does her own work and goes out five days in the week 
to help at the neighbors' houses." 

"It don't take her all day to do a little job like it does 
some people," the boy remarked. 

"Oh, fiddlesticks!" was Hattie's comment. 

"We been speakin' of Herb's wife," Mr. Slade said, 
"What was't he used to call her.^ Do you remember, 
old woman?" 

"Yes," Mrs. Slade responded, "he called her a 
chromo — a hand-painted one." 

"If a man was to call me that I'd break his face," 
Hattie declared. 

"If you was able, you might — if you wasn't you 
wouldn't," Jim said. "But you'd be madder'n an old 
wet hen. I know that." 

Two of the little girls were having a row in a corner 
which the mother now interrupted by saying, "Susy, 
come here." 

"The little girl, however, was loth to obey, and her 
mother went on to remark, "You're too big to be licked 
when people are around; but if I have to go after you, 
you'll hear from it." 

Jimmy had begun eating a crab-apple he found on 
the table. "Gramp," he said to Mr. Slade, "this 



The Village of the Seven Taverns 123 

apple's sourer'n swill. Every time I set my teeth into 
it the sourness draws my left eye right together." 

"Would you rather have that kind on the window- 
sill.'"' Gramp asked. 

"You bet," Jimmy replied, reaching for a couple. 
"Them are from the pasture. I call 'em brickbat 

sweets." 

"This boy," Gramp said, patting Jimmy's red head 
affectionately, "has never had an absent or tardy mark 
from the time he first started going to school." 

"I hope we don't have the same teacher again that 
we had last year," Jimmy said. "She was the ugliest 
old thing that ever kept school in the world." 

"She would everlastingly whale 'em," the boy's 
father declared; "and she'd make the ones she whipped 
go out and cut the sticks to do it with. One kid, after 
he'd cut the stick, broke it up and skinned for home." 

"We used to have forty scholars or more in this 
school," Mr. Slade observed. "Now they transport 
children from two other deestricts here and have in all 
less than twenty. When there ain't as many as seven 
school children in a deestrict it's the custom to ship 'em 
off to some other so as to get enough to make a quorum." 

"I was over at North Walpole yesterday," Jim said, 
" and passed the old Willis House. That's been haunted 
now more'n thirty years, ain't it?" 

"Yes," Mr. Slade replied. "When the first owner 
died it was rented, and tenant after tenant tried livin' 
in it and left. They said a ghost walked in one of the 



124 Highways and Byways of New England 

rooms at night and they'd hear all kinds of noises. The 
present tenant, though, Is a phlegmatic sort of a feller 
who's been in the house a good while, but he's got the 
haunted part boarded up." 

"That'd'a' been a good house for the Spiritualists to 
have meetln's In," Jim commented. 

"They used to have seances and circles where I lived 
before I moved here," Mr. Slade said. "My mother 
got bent that way, and Uncle Bill was red hot. Not 
long after Father's death there was a medium at our 
house and he gave each of us a message. He claimed 
Father was talking through him. I came In at the tall 
end, and Ma thought my message sounded like Father 
exactly. But I said, 'No It don't In any way, shape or 
form. It's a humbug from beginning to end.' 

"From what I saw I concluded that the mediums all 
played for the dollars and that their hearers was duped. 
Two of their believers were our nearest neighbors — a 
man and wife who agreed that whichever died first 
would come back once in a while and tickle the other's 
hand. Well, the wife died, and the man said he often 
felt his hand tickled and knew the spirit of his wife was 
with him. 

"Then there was a girl who would sit down to the 
organ, and some of the famous dead musicians would 
take possession of her and play through her fingers. But 
they played tunes that run her hands right out beyond 
the keys which was on the organ, and her folks had to 
get her a piano. She worked that pretty clever." 



The Village of the Seven Taverns 125 

Just then one of the little girls ran In shouting that 
Dan and Kit were in the orchard. "They're horses 
belonging to a neighbor," Mr. Slade said, as he rose to 
go out. "Nearly every day they're turned loose to bait 
along the roadside, but they spend most of their time 
in the fields and eat up our apples and everybody else's." 

The next morning when I looked out of my window 
a drizzling rain was falling, and a man who was plodding 
past with a coat thrown over his shoulders and the 
empty sleeves flapping on either side, only added to the 
melancholy of the scene. All that day the rain con- 
tinued to fall straight down through the quiet air with 
a steady rustle among the leaves of the trees and an 
equally steady drip from the eaves of the roof. When 
I asked any one about the prospects of the weather 
changing for the better, they would look up toward a 
certain glen in the hills known as Bill's Notch, which 
got its name from Bill Pulslfer, an early settler in whose 
pasture the notch was included. If the fog still hung in 
Bill's Notch the local residents were assured the storm 
would continue. 

At the dinner table Holt remarked that he'd been 
thinking of "Grampa" Stowell, the man who built the 
tavern. " I come into the room one time where he was 
sitting reading a letter," Holt went on, "and asked him 
for money to buy a guitar. He was getting old and 
cranky, and I can remember just how he whirled around 
in his chair and said, 'Don't be a-flutin' or a-fiddlin', 
but 'tend to your books!' 



126 Highways and Byways of New England 

"Grampa was a pretty clever old gentleman. Once 
in the midst of a thunderstorm when he was on his 
way to Millville he met a man from there who was 
considered the biggest rascal anywhere about. Grampa 
was on horseback — they didn't go in wagons much 
then — and the man was on foot and had a woman with 
him. They told Grampa, who was a Justice of the 
Peace, that they was goin' to his house to get him to 
marry 'em. 'Just as well here as anywhere,' he says, 
and he reined his horse up under a tree to get a little 
shelter from the storm, and raising his hand said — 

'Beneath this spreading chestnut tree, 
I declare you man and wife to be; 
And none but Him who rules the thunder 
Shall part this rogue and woman asunder.'" 

"It is a lonely road to Millville," the landlady said. 
"I've been worried a good many times when my hus- 
band had to come over it alone at night. I remember 
once in particular when I knew he'd got a large sum of 
money and was intending to walk from there, I kept 
going to the door to listen. You recollect, Holt, he had 
a habit of clearing his throat every little while; and 
when I'd go to the back porch to call him to breakfast 
I'd hark till I heard his 'ham!' so's to get some idea of 
where he was. Well, that was the first I heard of him 
the night I was speakin' of, and then I knew he was 
almost home." 

"You've had your share of worry," Holt said, "and 



The Village of the Seven Taverns 127 

I often think of how you took care of John G. so many 
years." 

"Who was he?" I asked. 

"John G. Stowell," Holt replied. "There's piles of 
Stowells in this region, and we have to use something 
besides the last name to distinguish one from another. 
John G. went to Dartmouth College, and he was the 
brightest scholar in his class." 

"He was too smart for his brain," the landlady in- 
terrupted — "that's just what the matter was." 

"He studied too hard," Holt continued. "Well, he 
was ready to graduate, and there was a big assembly 
gathered in the hall to hear the first exercises. Seven 
other students took part; but John G. was the orator 
of the occasion. At last it come his turn, and what did 
he do but turn and jump right through a window, and 
he ran all the way home — probably thirty miles. He 
climbed in at a window and went to his brother Tim's 
room. Tim woke up, and there was John G. standin' 
by his bed very wild lookin' and excited. 'They're 
after me, Tim,' he says, 'and they're goin' to shoot.' 

"He was never right after that and had to have a 
guardian appointed. He's often told us that it was a 
mistake, his goin' to college, and he'd say, 'If father 
had given me a darned good lickin' and set me to work 
I might have amounted to something.' " 

"John G. was queer in a good many ways," the land- 
lady said, "but shooting was the greatest thing with 
him, and he wore a big piece of sole leather on his 



128 Highways and Byways of New England 

breast to protect him from bullets. He kept it in place 
by punching holes along the edge and sewing it to his 
shirt. For fear his enemies might come to shoot him 
while he was asleep he always spent the night on the 
kitchen floor with the windows open and the door un- 
locked so he could run and escape. A bundle he carried 
about with him served as a pillow. The bundle was 
nothing but his extra clothing done up in a big handker- 
chief; and yet he was afraid somebody would be med- 
dling with It and took great pains to tie It up hard and 
fast, knot after knot, with a cord as big round as my 
little finger. He had to pick and pick when he wanted 
to untie It. 

"He was afraid If he wore nice things he'd be killed 
for what he had on. So when he bought a new pair of 
boots he'd keep 'em rolled up tight to get 'em all 
wrinkled before he'd put 'em on; and even then he'd 
cut a slit or two In them to make sure nobody would 
suspicion they were new. He always wore his worst 
clothes on the outside and looked like a ragbag. But 
sometimes when he was here he'd take off the shabby 
outside things and shave and smooth down the other 
clothes he wore, and then he'd say to me, 'Ain't I a 
good-formed man.'*' 

" 'Why don't you dress that way all the time.'" I'd 
ask. 

" 'Nobody wouldn't kill me for them old duds,' he'd 
say; 'but they would for these.' 

"So he'd put on the rags again, and he'd wear all 



The Village of the Seven Taverns 129 

those extra things buttoned right up in the hottest 
day that ever was. 

"Often he had a notion he was being squeezed with 
lard squeezers. 'They're squeezing of me to death,' 
he'd say. 'I can't see 'em, but they're doing it all the 
same. They just come right up behind me and put the 
squeezers on.' Sometimes in the morning he'd tell us 
they'd been squeezing him all night, and then he'd girt 
himself with a cord to measure and see how much he'd 
shrunk. 

"He wandered around a good deal, and the first 
year he was here he was gone one time for ten weeks. 
It was winter, and I never expected to see him again. 
I thought he was in a snowbank somewhere; but he'd 
been way up among the mountain farmers. Every- 
body knew John G. and he could always get kept; but 
no matter where he went he'd sleep on the kitchen floor 
with his clothes on, exactly as he did here, because he'd 
got to be ready to run. We never had any idea how 
long or short his stays would be with us. He'd get up 
early some morning and go out in the road and throw 
up his cane, and the direction it pointed when it fell 
was the direction he'd take. I think, though, after he 
started, he knew pretty well where he was going to head 
up at night. If I asked him about his intentions he'd 
reply, 'I'm goin' to find fresh air;' and off he'd go, 
cane in hand, and with his bundle on a stick over his 
shoulder. 

"Next to shooting he was in dread of being poisoned. 



130 Highways and Byways of New England 

He wouldn't eat with others and he wanted to watch 
you prepare his food to make sure you didn't put poison 
in it. One day he come in after having been gone a 
week or so, and he brought his hat full of crackers from 
the store and set it down on the wood in the woodbox. 
I happened to go and get a stick to put in the stove, 
and he jumped up and said, 'You've been pizening 
them crackers — I know you have!' 

" So he carried 'em out and throwed every one of 'em 
on the ground, and went to the store for a new mess. 

"He was very good about doing small jobs for me; 
but he didn't always do 'em at the time I asked him. 
'You're wantin' somethin' done all the while,' he'd say, 
'and I ain't goin' to sweep up your backyard,' or what- 
ever it was I'd spoken of. 

'"All right,' I'd reply, 'it won't matter a bit.' 

"But by and by he'd come around and say, 'Well, I 
s'pose you want that done,' and he would go ahead and 
do it. 

"He was quite a reader, and could converse on any- 
thing. One stormy winter evening, when my children 
were small, he says, 'Mrs. Stowell, can't I lie down in 
the sitting-room where the rest of you are.^' 

"I said of course he could, and he lay there on the 
floor while the children were studying their lessons. 
Sometimes they'd ask him the meaning of a word, and 
after he'd told 'em he'd say, 'Now I want you to parse 
that word,' and if they couldn't he would." 

"When the dances we used to have here broke up," 



The Village of the Seven Taverns 131 

Holt said, "those that attended liked to get John G. to 
make a speech. They'd chip in a dollar or two and 
give him a few glasses of liquor to oil him up and he'd 
get off some of the greatest declamations ever heard. 
He had a beautiful voice to speak or to sing either." 

"One day when he'd been with me about eight 
years," the landlady resumed, "as soon as he sat down 
to eat breakfast he began to talk pizen, and I see he 
was terribly wound up that morning. He'd only taken 
a few mouthfuls when he give a kind of a groan, and 
his right hand dropped by his side. He'd had a shock, 
and when I spoke to him he really didn't act as if he 
knew much. We took him and laid him down on the 
floor with his bundle under his head so he'd feel natural; 
but he never come to and he died that afternoon. 

"I'd always said that if I outlived him I'd have 
people see him well-dressed for once, and I had his best 
clothes put on, and he did look splendid in his coffin," 

" I tell you," Holt said, " If the story of this old tavern 
could be written with all the good and the bad things 
that have happened here, and all the funny and the sad 
things, it would make one of the most interesting books 
ever published." 

That was stretching the probabilities, and yet the 
random revelations unfolded to me in my short stay 
were suggestive of a strangely tangled web of both weal 
and woe; and there was something of the same appeal 
to the sympathies In the glimpses that came to me of 
the past In other village homes. Much of the tragic was 



132 Highways and Byways of New England 

traceable to drunkenness, and I wondered if the fact 
that the hamlet had been so numerously supplied with 
taverns did not have something to do with the melan- 
choly record. The present, too, was sullied by the same 
malign Influence; and this I regretted the more because 
I found the people so kindly and courteous and ready 
to do anything they could to oblige me. 

Notes. — The roads in southern Vermont are as a rule dirt or 
gravel and fairly good. But off the main thoroughfares you not 
infrequently find those that are hilly, winding, narrow, and poor, 
though there is likely to be sufficient compensation in the beautiful 
and unspoiled wild scenery. 

One place in this section of the state that all visitors should see 
is Bennington in the vicinity of which was fought one of the notable 
battles of the Revolution. It was the home of Ethan Allen of 
Ticonderoga fame. Among its attractions are a battle monument 
over three hundred feet high and the Hessian Burial Ground. 




•^Ac- 



K^Jf^ 



At the dour of a country store 



VII 



AUGUST IN THE BERKSHIRE HILLS 

BERKSHIRE, the westernmost of the counties of 
Massachusetts, sweeps straight across the state 
from Connecticut to Vermont. It is a district 
of mountains and tumbled lesser heights, and though 
one or two of its valleys are broad enough to give a 
sense of repose, even there the blue waves of the encir- 
cling hills are constantly in sight. From the up- 
lands streams come coursing down the wooded glens, 
with here and there a foaming waterfall, and they go 
on through the valleys, still swiftly as a rule, but some- 
times broadening into a pond or lake, and occasionally 
set to work to turn the wheels of a mill. 

Portions of the county, like Lenox and Stockbridge 
are famous as the summer playground of millionaries 
from the great cities, and there you find palatial man- 
sions in the midst of great estates that have all the 
beauty in architecture, gardens, and grounds which 
wealth can confer. In other parts of the county farms 
predominate, sometimes bearing evidence of thrift and 
prosperity, sometimes betokening shiftless poverty or a 
dubious struggle against hard conditions. It has been 
said that in the back country hill towns the ordinary 
farmer is worth scarcely five hundred dollars and that 



134 Highways and Byways of New England 

important items in his property are a fifteen dollar 
horse and a cheap watch chiefly valuable for swapping 
purposes. 

When I started out to make an automobile trip in 
Berkshire I entered the county from the east, and after 
a long climb up an ever-winding dirt road that followed 
a stream through the woodland I emerged from the 
forest. The long road stretched upward as if it led to 
the very sky, and by and by I came to a deserted house 
and stopped to eat lunch under a tree in the yard. The 
house had been snug and substantial in its prime, but 
now the shingles were slipping off the roof, the walls 
were out of plumb, and the underpinning was giving 
way. Faint traces of red paint lingered on the weather- 
worn clapboards. Near one corner some neglected 
rosebushes had become a thicket. The interior was a 
wreck of falling ceilings, warped floors, and rubbish. 
Even the great stone fireplaces were cracking and going 
to pieces. Back of the house the barn had slumped 
down, and there it lay a heap of decaying debris. The 
fields around that once bore bountiful crops now pro- 
duced only thin yields of wild grass, and the stone 
walls that in earlier days were so sturdy had become 
ruinous, and brush flourished along their borders. 

I was in the town of Peru, and somewhat farther on, 
at a crossroads, was a church, a store, a schoolhouse, 
and the town hall, all in a row, all wooden, and all 
painted white. No more than five or six dwellings were 
in the immediate vicinity. The spot is twenty-one 



August in the Berkshire Hills 135 

hundred feet above the sea, and Is the highest inhabited 
land in Massachusetts. So exactly is the church 
perched on the summit of the watershed that the rain 
falling on the west roof goes Into the Housatonic and 
what falls on the east roof goes Into the Connecticut. 
Each of the four roads plunges boldly down Into a vale 
only to mount ridges beyond and it continues its 
undulating course mile after mile. 

A century ago the town had a thousand Inhabitants, 
but they have steadily decreased ever since until now 
there are scarcely two hundred. The bleakness of the 
situation, especially In winter, the stony soil, the 
difficult roads, and the feeling that life in such surround- 
ings is dull and that the returns for labor must be small 
at best has made the people drift away to regions they 
fancy are more favored. 

I visited a neglected cemetery off on a hillside that 
overlooked the group of buildings at the corners. It 
was bounded by stone walls, a few unthrifty trees grew 
in it, and the straggling gravestones were nearly hidden 
in weeds and brush. In places the ground was gay with 
patches of scarlet bunch-berries. Blueberry bushes 
flourished too and were loaded with delicious fruit. I 
mentioned my enjoyment of the blueberries to the 
storekeeper when I returned to the village. " So you've 
been robbing the graves," was his comment. 

The store was architecturally plainer and less preten- 
tious than many barns, and Its austerity was unre- 
lieved by a single near tree. There it stood beside the 



136 Highways and Byways of New England 

road exposed to the summer sun and the onslaughts 
of the winter storms, yet whatever its shortcomings in 
structure and environment it was the business and 
social center of all the mountain region around. Out in 
front of' it the ground was much cluttered with an ac- 
cumulation of timber, wagons, sleds, farm machines, 
rolls of wire, boxes, barrels, and other miscellany. 
Inside it was crowded to the doors with goods of mar- 
vellous variety. The merchandise had encroached on 
the aisles till one could hardly move about, and it was 
stacked against the post office boxes so that they were 
almost hidden from sight. 

I looked on while the proprietor made a sale of foot- 
wear to a young fellow whose horses, hitched to a 
wagon loaded with grain, were waiting for him out in 
front. "There's a ripping good shoe, Henry," the 
merchant said convincingly. He turned it this way 
and that, felt of its leather with evident admiration, 
and handed it to his customer who was soon persuaded 
to buy. 

A short time before burglars had broken in the back 
entrance and blown off the door of the safe with nitro 
glycerine. The storekeeper only became aware of what 
had happened when he opened the store the next morn- 
ing. He found that the explosion had stopped the clock 
on the wall near the safe with the pointers at five 
minutes past three, and that the burglars had carried 
off some loose change and possibly two dollars worth of 
stamps. 



August in the Berkshire Hills 137 

One of the men loitering on the platform at the en- 
trance to the store was a woodland worker whose 
employer owned a portable sawmill. He had me go 
with him out into the road and pointed to the mill 
nearly concealed among the trees off on a neighboring 
slope. "We broke down yesterday," he said. "That's 
why I'm doin' nothin' today. We move around from 
woodlot to woodlot. This feller that I'm workin' for 
has been at it with his mill for the last thirty-five years. 
He hires ten or twelve men and keeps a couple of teams. 
We have a shack to live in that is made in sections so 
it can be taken down and put up in a new place. We do 
our own cooking. Some of the spruce trees we're 
cuttin' now are two foot through on the stump. We're 
at it all the year, winter and summer. One season is 
just as good as another except that in hot weather the 
wood is gummy and makes the saws stick." 

The church on the hilltop was of a finicky suburban 
type, but on the same spot there formerly stood a 
simple, dignified old white meeting-house. One Sat- 
urday evening in February the janitor went in and 
started the fires so that the edifice would get warm for 
the services of the next day. Shortly afterward the 
building was In flames, and on that high ridge the blaz- 
ing beacon could be seen for many miles around. The 
people of the vicinity turned out, and quite a crowd 
gathered, but It was Impossible to fight the fire or to 
save anything. A "terrible" wind blew, and for a time 
the store was in danger from the flying brands. Men 



138 Highways and Byways of New England 

climbed up on the roof and threw pails of water over 
the shingles, and the night was so bitterly cold that 
the water froze as fast as it fell. 

Late in the afternoon I descended the hill westerly 
a few miles and found lodging at an old farm which 
had been transformed into a summer boarder resort. 
A long two-story annex encircled by a broad piazza 
adjoined the house. It was a sort of barracks rudely 
partitioned off into sleeping apartments. No lath, 
plaster, or paint were used, and the walls and floor 
were one board thick. After I had retired I found that 
the noises from the rooms on either side all came 
through, and what with the talking and singing and 
walking about inside of the building and on the piazzas, 
the dancing and the thrumming of the piano, sleep was 
out of the question. Finally some man dropped his 
shoes on the floor above. I started up with the impres- 
sion that there had been an earthquake. Surely, if any 
one had come to this resort to get into the quiet country 
and cure a nervous breakdown such a racket would 
have finished him. But so far as I am aware the people 
were satisfied and enjoying themselves, though I could 
not help feeling that their loafing was rather uneasy 
and objectless. 

The farm people and their helpers, on the other hand, 
led a life that was genuinely strenuous. They worked 
early and late, and various makeshifts served for their 
sleeping apartments. Some had bunks in the barn, 
some occupied tents in a field across the road, and the 



August in the Berkshire Hills 139 

old farmer slept in a room roughly fixed up in a shed. 
When he came out in the morning smoking his pipe 
and sat down on the piazza I got to windward of him 
and asked what crops were raised in the region. 

He puffed meditatively once or twice and then said: 
"Well, we raise potatoes and corn and buckwheat and 
considerable hay and oats. Our season ain't really long 
enough for corn. This year we had a backward spring, 
cold and wet, and now the corn is just silking out. 
There'll be more stalks than ears. We've already had 
frost in low places, and only now and then an ear will 
get ripe, but we'll husk it all just the same and feed the 
soft corn to the pigs. 

"When I was a young man I bought a hundred acre 
farm up in Peru with a good house and three barns on 
it for eight hundred dollars. The house alone couldn't 
have been built for that money. Pretty well-to-do 
farmers lived there in them days. But one after another 
they moved away or got old and died. They all had 
good dairies and herds of young cattle, and they made 
butter and cheese. Lots of sheep were kept, and I 
remember one man had a thousand. Now there are not 
any the dogs raise havoc so. It's fine country for 
sheep, and I think they may have 'em again up there, 
but the pastures are run out, and new fences would 
have to be made. A cattle fence won't keep 'em in. 
You've got to have more wires, and barbed wire won't 
do because it pulls out too much wool. We used to 
have brush fence and fence made of spruce poles, and 



140 Highways and Byways of New England 

there were fences of rails split out of swamp ash. But 
the old wooden fences have about all rotted down. 

"I brought up most of my fifteen children in Peru, 
and some of 'em died there, but I wouldn't have 'em 
buried in the Peru cemetery. That's a bad spot. It's 
so wet that I've seen graves, after they were dug, half 
full of water. The people would put in spruce brush so 
the cofHn, when it was lowered, wouldn't go right into 
the water. That was too shocking for me, and I buried 
my children down here. 

"Finally I moved onto this place, and I kept thirty 
cows, but as time went on it got so I couldn't get help 
to milk so many or raise enough to feed 'em. The only 
men that came along askin' for work were tramps and 
drunkards. They were all in rags, and the first thing 
I'd have to do was to furnish 'em with shoes and shirts. 
They'd stay a couple of weeks until about five dollars 
was due 'em, and then they'd want the money, and off 
they'd go. It was enough to try the patience of Job, 
and I give up. That's why you'll find the barns and 
other buildings here, which ought to be full of cows and 
stock, nearly empty. 

"When I bought the place I could hire help for 
reasonable wages, but now a man wants thirty dollars a 
month and board, and he can't begin to earn what he 
asks. That's been my experience. Since we've gone 
into the summer boarder business we have to hire a 
good many girls, but none of 'em wants to wash dishes. 
They're willing to wait on table, but the rest of the day 



August in the Berkshire Hills 141 

they don't want to do nawthin'. It ain't because 
they're not able to do the work. They're good eaters, 
and they sleep long enough, and they're stout, but if 
you hire one of 'em she expects there'll be a man around 
to wait on her. He must get the wood and water and 
make the fires and fetch the potatoes and do all the 
rough work, you know, while she looks on." 

By the time the chill of the early morning had been 
tempered by the bright sunshine I was again on my 
way. The weather was ideal, and whenever I was out 
in the open country either on the hills or in the culti- 
vated valleys I had superb views of the mountains, 
with a splendid blue sky above on which the stately 
cloudships sailed. Most of the big upheaving mountain 
ranges had tilted fields and pastures on their lower 
slopes, and then the green woods swept up over their 
summits, but occasionally a great rounded height was 
patchworked with cultivated lands to its very top, and 
on certain other heights the forest crept down to the 
valley depths and even arched and shadowed the low- 
land roadways. 

The Berkshire road is a continual delight. Perhaps 
It was most appealing to me when from the verge of a 
hill I overlooked a long stretch of it with bordering 
homes, fields, and fences, orchards, and shade trees — a 
human thoroughfare travelled for long years past by 
rich and poor, by workers and by pleasure-seekers, by 
school children and by churchgoers, by lovers and by 
mourners. Often it flowed gently on for miles up and 



142 Highways and Byways of New England 

down the little hills between the mountain ranges, but 
it was ever winding, and changes and surprises in the 
scene were constant. In the wilder sections there were 
yellow masses of goldenrod and wild sunflowers beside 
the way or along the field divisions and the streams, 
and sometimes there were jungles of joe-pye weed 
capped with mauve-tinted bloom, and occasionally 
high-bush blackberry vines drooped low with a weight 
of fruit close to the wheeltracks. 

One of the pleasant little valley towns that I visited 
was Lanesboro, to which I was attracted largely by the 
fact that it was the birthplace of "Josh Billings." His 
real name was Henry W. Shaw, and the old Shaw house 
where he passed his early years still looks down from 
its position on a high plateau of a western hill. The 
humorist is buried in the village cemetery, where, in 
accord with his wishes, an enormous rough block of 
marble from a local quarry marks his grave. 

A townsman recalled that "Squire Shaw," the father 
of Josh Billings, was the richest, most prominent man 
in the region. He had marked ability, knew more 
theology than the minister, and more law than nine- 
tenths of the lawyers. The town always elected him 
to the legislature when he wanted to go. In Boston, if 
his support was gained for a measure, that measure was 
considered as good as passed. He was a forcible speaker, 
and he could shed tears and work on the feelings of his 
audience, and yet be as cool as a cucumber inside. The 
squire often went to the store where the post office was 



August in the Berkshire Hills 143 

and sat for an hour or more to talk politics, and the 
villagers liked to listen to him. He had his failings, 
but his wife was "a. devoted Christian woman," the 
daughter of one of the nabobs of the town who owned 
five or six farms. 

Josh had an older brother, Bob, who inherited 
twenty thousand dollars when he came of age, and that 
spoiled him. He began to carouse, chose wild young 
men for his companions, kept fast horses, and drove 
from town to town and tavern to tavern. One of his 
pranks was the stealing of the bell-tongue from the 
Lanesboro meeting-house steeple. On another occa- 
sion, when there was a revival meeting at the church 
he hitched up his best horse and drove round and 
round the building all of a winter afternoon until the 
meeting came to an end. He married the sister of one 
of his cronies, and his father gave him a farm, but Bob 
wouldn't settle down, and finally he drifted West, 
where he died. 

"Hen Shaw," as the humorist was commonly known 
in his youth, was a reticent boy, and didn't seem to 
care about having companions. Presently he was sent 
off to Hamilton College. Then it was whispered around 
that he had run away and joined a circus. But no one 
dared ask the old squire whether the rumor was true 
or not. In two or three years Josh returned home. 
Once a menagerie came to town, and he went in and 
showed up the animals. He drew a crowd by his 
quaintly humorous descriptions and comments. 



144 Highways and Byways of New England 

As a man he was over six feet tall and large-framed, 
but round-shouldered, spare, and bony. After he 
began to write he let his hair grow long and cultivated 
oddity in his appearance. He married a local farmer's 
daughter, whose folks objected to the match, because 
they thought he was shiftless, while his own folks were 
no less displeased because her family was less aristo- 
cratic than theirs. So the courtship was mostly con- 
ducted on the village street. 

Josh had not been brought up to systematic habits, 
and he was undoubtedly physically lazy and disin- 
clined to exert himself. This, however, did not prevent 
his winning fame as an author and making a fortune by 
his writing and his lecture tours. He came to Lanes- 
boro every summer and boarded at the hotel, where he 
enjoyed sitting around and talking to congenial friends 
and acquaintances, or he might visit the store and loiter 
there chatting and cracking jokes. Now and then he 
would go fishing. 

In his day and generation he added not a little to the 
world's gayety. He was a keen judge of character, and 
his whimsical wisdom and the genuine originality of his 
vein of humor and his fantastic spelling will long be 
remembered. 

One of the Berkshire Edens, it seems to me. Is New 
Ashford. Yet It Is an Eden that Is apparently unap- 
preciated and likely to disappear oflF the map, for its 
dwindling inhabitants now number scarcely a hundred, 
and there are vacant houses even in the village center. 



August in the Berkshire Hills 145 

The place is in a tangle of steep hills, with rocky 
streams coursing down the hollow, and rough, irregular 
fields here and there crowding back the woodland. In 
one of the valley nooks was a tiny white church, and 
near it a lowly, one-room schoolhouse that clung to a 
slope by the wayside with a cornfield and a barnyard 
coming close up to its walls. The hamlet certainly was 
not thriving, but in picturesque charm it was a rustic gem. 

I stopped there over night with a courtly old gentle- 
man who had been selectman for thirty-six years. The 
rest of the family consisted of a mild faded wife, and a 
grim silent daughter. As we sat talking after supper 
my host said: "I'd like to sell out so my wife and I 
can have a little rest. It's time we stopped, but you 
can't sell a farm here. You'd have to hire some one to 
buy, and we don't feel like giving away our land after 
putting so many long years of work on it. So here we'll 
probably stay until we die. I keep ten cows, and my 
wife makes thirty pounds or more of butter a week. I 
drive twelve miles to Pittsfield with a load of our farm 
produce every Saturday. All the women there look for 
me on that day. 

"Last week, when I was down there I had to testify 
in a law case. I didn't have to go to court, but to a 
lawyer's office, and a phonographer who wrote short- 
hand took down all that I said as fast as I spoke. I 
saw what he wrote, but I couldn't make out the first 
thing. It looked as if a spider had stepped on the paper 
and walked across. 



146 Highways and Byways of New England 

"This daughter who is living with us is not right in 
her head. She married a man who drank. He was 
smart, but he liked liquor too well, and that spoiled 
everything. She's all the time imagining that he's 
tormenting her. About the only comfort she gets Is in 
painting. You see the pictures on the jars and things 
here in the parlor, and those sheep in the frame on the 
wall. She painted 'em all, and I think she does it pretty 
good. 

"You must excuse my clothes. I've been fishing 
today and I look like the old scratch. I went to a 
stream in a hollow where there's a lot of coons, and I 
never got a bite. A coon fishes just as well as any man, 
and they've cleaned the stream out. 

"There's a trout pond back of the house that I made, 
but year before last it went dry. We had no rain for 
weeks, and the water went down and down, and the 
brook that flowed into it sank away to nothing. When 
the pond had dwindled to a pool we could see the big 
trout sailing around In there, and finally a cousin who 
was stopping with us caught them all. But he had a 
job, for a trout is a terribly tigery fellow. We had fish 
to eat and to throw away, but I wouldn't touch them. 
I'd as soon have eaten my own grandfather. I don't 
like to eat any of our wild creatures that we see growing 
and running about. I couldn't eat a rabbit or a squirrel 
or a partridge — not if I knew it. 

"When I was a boy this town had four times as many 
Inhabitants as It has now, and they made a better living 










Harvest time 



August in the Berkshire Hills 147 

than the smaller number does at present. Only one 
child was born in the place last year. There's no store 
here, and if there was we'd run it into the ground in 
short order. Such times as we was without money we'd 
go to it and get trusted, but if we had ten cents cash 
in our pockets we'd go to Pittsfield and spend it. 

"There used to be three taverns in this little town. 
That big old-fashioned house near the church was one 
of the most noted hostelries between Canada and Long 
Island Sound. Everybody could get drunk there and 
enjoy himself. The town had such repute as a roister- 
ing place that people used to say any person who was 
born and lived up to manhood and died without coming 
to New Ashford died a fool. About all the people drank 
in my youth. My father was a temperance man, but 
he would get ten gallons of rum every year for his two 
hired men to drink through haying. 

"In those days great droves of cattle went through 
here on their way to Connecticut. They'd stop in the 
village over night. We've kept enough in a year at 
four dollars a hundred head to come to one hundred and 
fifty dollars. The cattle would be turned into our 
pasture, or, if it was autumn, into the mowing, and the 
drovers would bunk in anywhere about the house or 
barn. 

"Jim Fisk, the New York financier, passed through 
here often as a young man driving a cart like a circus 
wagon with four horses attached. He was a high-toned 
peddler. His father visited the town too, and would 



148 Highways and Byways of New England 

stop at the tavern. It was said that once when he was 
there he lied and so cheated a man out of ten cents. 
Later Jim was told of what his father had done, but 
he said: "I don't believe it. He wouldn't do anything 
as small as that. He wouldn't lie for ten cents, but he 
might tell ten lies for a dollar.' 

"We have a saying here that our church was built by 
the devil. You see, there was no church in the place 
for a long time after the region was settled. One night 
a lot of the local men were in the bar room at the tavern 
drinking and they got to saying it was too bad the town 
didn't have a meeting-house. So, although they were 
as wicked a set of men as ever lived, they subscribed a 
hundred dollars apiece on the spot. I can remember 
when the church was building, and how I, like a little 
fool of a boy, climbed up one of the pillars of the gallery 
and slid back and scraped my shins. 

"A student from Williams College preaches for us. 
He comes down with the stage driver Saturday and 
goes back Monday. A woman at the corner boards 
him and keeps him posted as to what is going on in 
town. She's one of the kind that feels it her duty to 
let the world know all that she knows. We pay this 
young man two dollars and a half a Sunday. He's 
poor and he's learning to preach, and he's got a girl 
he's going to marry as soon as he gets through college. 
So it's a very good thing for him." 

Nothing can be more attractive in half wild rural 
roadways than those that wind through the glens of 



August in the Berkshire Hills 149 

New Ashford, and not many miles away, at Williams- 
town is the most beautiful town street in the county. 
I doubt if this is excelled in America. It is impressively 
broad, there are noble trees and velvet lawn, it undulates 
piquantly up and down the hills, here and there along 
it are simple old college halls that have the charm of 
venerable age, and modern college buildings of great 
architectural grace, while roundabout are the serene 
blue mountain ranges. 

While I was loitering on the grass of the park-like 
street a man came shambling along and accosted me. 
He had been drinking, and his breath was odorous and 
his clothes dirty, and the flies swarmed around him as 
if he was a choice morsel. He was bound to talk, and 
I maneuvered to get where the wind would carry his 
aroma away from me. I did not care for his opinion as 
to how the president of the United States ought to run 
the country, and I asked him a question about Grey- 
lock, the loftiest height not only of those within view, 
but of all in the state. 

"You see that nearest mountain," he said pointing. 
"You think that's pretty high, don't you.? Well, it 
looks so; but you get on the top of Greylock and see 
this thing here — why, 'tain't nothing' only a little 
haystack. I used to live at the foot of Greylock on the 
western side. The first time I was ever on top of the 
mountain was when I was sixteen years old. There 
was a circus right over the other side of the mountain 
at Adams, and I wanted to go to it and spend seventy- 



150 Highways and Byways of New England 

five cents that I had. So I started off to walk over the 
mountain, though I was a good deal scared because I 
didn't know but I might run against a catamount or 
something. I went right up to the highest part of the 
mountain. It was steeper on the other side, and pretty 
soon I come to some ledges where I couldn't see no 
path, and the rocks seemed to go down so perpendicular 
and so far that I thought I could jump right down into 
the town. But I found a great big pine tree growing up 
from below, and the top was close enough to the edge 
of the cliff for me to get into the branches, and I slid 
down it as nice as a pin. After a while I got to Adams 
and I had a great day at the circus and spent my 
seventy-five cents." 

It is from the valley at Adams and the slopes east of 
the town that Greylock is seen most imposingly. The 
mountain rises in steep inclines and precipices to a 
height of thirty-five hundred feet, and seems twice as 
big as when viewed at a distance on its less abrupt 
approaches. Probably it is most beautiful when its 
lofty form peers out vaguely from the mists like a piece 
of heaven. 

The last place where I stopped in the county was 
Savoy, another of the unthriving smaller villages. It 
was far up in a hollow among the wooded ridges, and a 
clear trout brook flowed along only a stone's throw 
from the cluster of houses that huddled about the two 
little churches. One of the industries of the region was 
the gathering of ferns. A wagon piled high with large 



August In the Berkshire Hills 151 

boxes full of the ferns passed through the hamlet while 
I was there on its way to the railroad. The ferns were 
to be shipped to a city and kept In cold storage until 
there was a demand for them in the fall and winter. 

"Some of the people here make six or seven dollars 
a day picking those ferns," an old man in the village 
informed me. "They don't any of 'em want to farm, 
and when they get a good chance they move away. 
Twenty-five years ago these two churches used to be 
full every Sunday morning. The people drove in from 
all around. Now there are fewer of 'em and they don't 
care much about going to meeting anyway. The 
Methodist church Is not used, and they can't raise a 
congregation of thirty in the other. 

"I had a hotel here when I was younger. It was a 
long, two-story building with a good-sized wing. There 
was a big dance hall in it, and people came here to dance 
from the valley towns and everywhere. They'd eat a 
turkey supper and then dance most all night. I had 
old Dick Briggs up from North Adams to call off. 
Besides, I hired from there a band of six pieces, and if 
they got blowed over the fence on the way home I was 
expected to pay the damages. Yes, once the wagon 
they was In blew up against a fence down In the valley, 
and the fellow with the big fiddle went over the fence. 
They sent me a bill for damages afterward. 

"There was lots of trout them times, and I kept men 
fishing for 'em and had trout suppers and dinners that 
people were glad to come a long distance to get. One 



152 Highways and Byways of New England 

of my patrons was a young man who was the son of a 
wealthy manufacturer, and he'd make things howl 
around here. Oh, he was a highroller! One of his tricks 
was to take a bundle of hay out in the road, buy a 
gallon of kerosene to pour on it and have a bonfire. He 
went to college, but I don't know whether he got any 
education or not. His father made him treasurer of 
the mill, and one time he went off to a yacht race and 
lost seventy-five thousand dollars betting. He took 
the payroll money to settle with, and then his father 
had to make good the loss. 

"A young physician had an office at the far end of 
the hotel, and one spring evening he filled his stove full 
of dry stuff and went off and left it burning. He ate 
supper and then stood out in front of the hotel talking 
with some feller who'd been fishing. The next thing we 
knew fire was coming out of the roof over the doctor's 
office. The garret was all one long apartment full of 
rubbish, and the fire went through there as fast as a 
horse could run. Of course the neighbors all came to 
do what they could and they carried out the feather 
beds and threw the mirrors and breakable things out 
of the windows. The hotel barn would have burned if 
men hadn't got onto the roof and spread wet blankets. 
I was a big fool for saving that barn. It wasn't worth 
much separate from the hotel, and I had five hundred 
dollars insurance on it." 

Notes. — Berkshire, with its great variety of scenery, both rugged 
and pastoral, is one of the most attractive resort regions of New 



August in the Berkshire Hills 153 

England. At Lenox there is not a hilltop or a valley but has its 
splendid house and far-flung attendant gardens, and each mansion 
commands some natural mountain vista of great beauty. One of 
the striking charms of the larger towns is their broad tree-lined 
park-like streets. The historic and literary associations of the 
country make a strong appeal to the pride of the residents and the 
interest of the visitors. In the Stockbridge Valley the Housatonic 
or "good" Indians had their chief abode. The credit of Christian- 
izing them belongs to John Sargent, who came into the wilder- 
ness here at the age of twenty-four mastered their language, 
and preached three or four sermons a week to them. At the. 
west end of Stockbridge's Main Street is the old Indian burial 
ground. 

In 1751 that greatest of colonial preachers, Jonathan Edwards, 
came to Stockbridge to assist in the task of converting the red 
heathen. His grandson, the notorious Aaron Burr, spent a part of 
his boyhood in the town. The poet Bryant for a time practiced 
law in Great Barrington, and found inspiration in the vicinity for a 
number of his poems. Hawthorne lived at Lenox when he wrote 
"Tanglewood Tales." Holmes had an estate in Pittsfield, and 
Longfellow passed his summers in one of the town homes and there 
wrote "The Old Clock on the Stairs." 

At the north end of the country is Williamstown with its famous 
college, and Greylock, monarch of the Massachusetts mountains. 
A road ascends to the summit of the mountain, and in good weather 
automobiles can make the trip. Through Williamstown and 
easterly over Hoosac Mountain passed the trail of the Mohawks, 
and this is still dimly visible in places. 

The main highways of Berkshire are excellent for motoring, and 
most of the byways are passable except in unfavorable weather. 
As for the mountainous sections, these are the tramper's paradise 
with their enticing paths and woodroads. The region is at its best 
in spring when the leaves and blossoms are putting forth, or in 
autumn when the foliage is aflame with tints of scarlet and gold, 



154 Highways and Byways of New England 

but the beauty of midsummer and the white glory of the winters 
are scarcely less worthy of being enjoyed. 

Balanced Rock is the county's greatest natural curiosity. This 
is reached by a pleasant drive northeasterly from Pittsfield. Its 
height is eighteen feet, its weight about one hundred and fifty tons, 
and it rests on one square foot of surface; and yet it is so evenly 
balanced as to be readily swayed by a man's weight. 




E^ 



VIII 

THE PORT OF THp FISHERMEN 

THE fame of Gloucester as the greatest of 
American fishing ports, and the fact that so 
many of its inhabitants spend their lives in an 
unusually picturesque and dangerous calling lend it a 
peculiar charm. It is on the rock-ribbed outreach of 
Cape Ann, and from the summits of its steep hills you 
can look far off over the hazy ocean, while on the nar- 
row, irregular streets of its waterfront with their noisy 
saloons and numerous dingy, broken-windowed build- 
ings you see many weather-browned sailor folk and get 
frequent glimpses of the fishing-vessels lying at the 
wharves. Then, too, there are odors — salty, fishy smells 
that are agreeably suggestive when not too pronounced, 
but which in some sections make you step along in 
haste to escape them, and there are times when the 
entire town is enveloped with the aroma from certain 
outlying glue factories. 

My acquaintance with Gloucester began on a summer 
afternoon when it was in gala attire celebrating an 
Old Home Week holiday. The business streets were 
crowded, and I was glad to get off them down to the 
wharves. There I found everything very quiet, the 
buildings closed, the acres of flake yards, where the 



156 Highways and Byways of New England 

fish are dried, vacant, and almost no work being done. 
Presently I happened on a group of loafers — "old 
Homeweekers," they called themselves. They were in 
a spar yard — a space strewn with chips and shavings 
and long, straight logs, some in the rough, and some 
smooth and round and nearly ready to be fitted onto 
the vessels. The loafers were socially inclined, the more 
so, no doubt, because they had been indulging rather 
freely in whiskey. One of them had fallen into the 
water. He looked bedraggled, yet was cheerfully smok- 
ing his pipe and seemed to think his ducking had been 
quite a humorous performance. 

The most voluble of the group slapped me familiarly 
on the back and said: "I'll tell you just how it hap- 
pened. I'll give it to you straight. Our friend here fell 
in — we have those occasions that way, you know. He 
stepped into a dory, and it tilted and tipped him out. 
The rest of us shouted, 'Man overboard!' and started 
to run to help him. But he was in no special danger. 
It was low tide and the water was so shallow he could 
stand on the bottom and hold on to the side of the boat. 
One of the soberest of us soon got him by the collar 
and drew him out to give him one more drink on shore." 

When this narrative was concluded I resumed my 
rambling, and by and by I came across a skipper and a 
sailor on a rather small and rusty schooner. We ex- 
changed greetings and I climbed abroad. The deck was 
cluttered with ropes, anchors, coils of fishlines, and 
similar truck, and near the bow was a nest of dories — 



The Port of the Fishermen 157 

several rowboats set one inside of the other. The 
skipper was looking over his fishing-gear and trying to 
figure out some problem In connection with Increasing 
the number of hooks on the lines. He thought he ought 
to solve the difficulty easily; for when he was a lad he 
had gone through one book of algebra and started 
another. "Yes," he said, "I was well educated, and 
at the age of fourteen I knew five different languages. 
My parents were Swedes living in Finland; so I learned 
to talk their language and the language of the country, 
and it was easy in the town where we had our home to 
pick up Russian, German and English. Finland Is a 
fine country, if it wasn't for the way the Russians treat 
the inhabitants." 

"Ah, dose Russians!" the sailor exclaimed. "I don't 
know why dey are so savage. Dose are der people, by 
gosh, dat der missionaries ought to be sent to civilize!" 

"Well," the skipper said, continuing his personal 
story, "I went to sea because that was the only way to 
get rid of bad companions I'd fallen in with; and the 
men ain't all angels on the sea, either. I've sailed most 
everywhere — had eight days in a week crossing the 
Pacific, and all that sort of thing." 

But of late years he had been the captain of a 
Gloucester fishing schooner. "It's curious, the way 
we manage," he said. " I take this vessel which belongs 
to a firm here, and go off with It and handle ten or 
twelve thousand dollars that the fish we catch during a 
year sell for, and never give any security. It's the same 



158 Highways and Byways of New England 

with the rest of the skippers. There's no class of shore 
people who could get trusted that way. When we are 
starting off on a trip we buy food, bait, ice, and such 
things all on tick, to be paid for at the end of the voyage. 
One-fourth of one per cent of the total receipts goes to 
the Widows' and Orphans' Fund, and a quarter of the 
balance is for the boat, and the rest, after taking out 
the expenses, is for the fishermen. There are ten men 
go on this boat. Suppose we come in with a stock of 
one thousand dollars. The boat gets two hundred and 
fifty, and the expenses are about two hundred. That 
leaves five hundred and fifty dollars, or fifty-five dollars 
apiece. 

"We all share exactly alike except the cook, who is 
given ten dollars extra. You see it depends more on 
him than on any one else whether we have a good voyage 
or not. He can make the trip shorter or longer just as 
he pleases. If he ain't kept good natured he'll like 
enough oblige you to start for home before you've got a 
full fare. For instance, he may use the water to ex- 
treme, taking fresh when salt would do just as well. 
I've had plenty of water on board for four weeks, and 
it would hardly last half that time. Then he may boil 
for one meal food enough to last two days and heave 
overboard what ain't eaten. 

"After we reach port, the minute the fish are out of 
the vessel, we get a check for 'em, and if it's before the 
banks close we settle up that day and every man is at 
liberty. The captain's share is the same as that of the 



The Port of the Fishermen 159 

others; but twice a year the owners pay him from 
three to ten per cent of what the boat itself has earned. 
There's a sharp competition to get the skippers that 
make the biggest catches, and such men can command 
fancy pay. 

"The money the fishermen receive goes in all sorts 
of ways, good and bad. Some sailors, even if a trip 
netted 'em a hundred dollars a day, would spend it as 
freely as they made it, and you can't get 'em to go 
again till their money's all gone. The vessel lies in 
port a couple of days or so and then starts on another 
cruise. I used to take four or five fishermen and the rest 
greenhorns; but the greenhorns so soon got to know 
more'n I did that I ain't goin' to break in any more. 

"The skipper has got to deal square with his crew, 
for if he ain't pretty honest they won't go with him. 
One poor settlement and they are done. Then, too, it's 
impossible to get the men behind the gun unless he's 
generally successful. If he don't make money they'll 
find places in other vessels. 

"We have to go farther and work harder to get a 
cargo of fish than we used to. Fifty years ago boats 
would come into Boston so loaded with fish they 
couldn't sell 'em all and would have to go out to sea 
and dump the rest overboard. We don't dump any 
fish nowadays, and if it wasn't for the hatcheries there'd 
be a complete famine in 'em. They're nowhere near 
so plentiful, but we make as much as ever we did be- 
cause the price is a great deal higher." 



i6o Highways and Byways of New England 

This skipper spoke rather lightly of the dangers of 
the business, though he mentioned a recent trip when 
they had a thrilling experience in a fog. They heard a 
great steamer coming. Not a breath of wind was stir- 
ring, and the schooner lay helpless right in the path of 
the approaching monster; but their fog-horn was heard 
in time to allow the steamer to stop its engines and shift 
its course, or the little boat would have been crushed 
like an eggshell. 

When a schooner arrives on the fishing grounds the 
dories are hoisted overboard and, with two men in 
each, go out to set the trawls. A trawl is a line about a 
mile long from which a thousand hooks hang on smaller 
lines two or three feet in length. At each end of the 
trawl is a keg float, and these floats are marked with the 
vessel's name. They are anchored, and the trawl rests 
on the bottom. In fine weather the dories are out 
early every day taking up the trawls. A boat starts at 
one end of a trawl, and as fast as the men remove the 
fish from the hooks and put on fresh bait they throw 
the line overboard. The schooner itself does not 
anchor, but cruises around in the neighborhood of the 
trawls. While the dories are out the captain and cook 
who remain on board handle the ship and keep a sharp 
lookout for possible danger. 

The Grand Banks of Newfoundland are the great 
fishing-ground on this side of the Atlantic, and there 
you find vessels all the year round. It is a chilly and 
foggy region, and in winter its dreariness and danger 



The Port of the Fishermen l6l 

are increased by frequent gales and snowstorms. If 
sky or sea show any hint of threatening weather while 
a schooner's crew is out a recall signal is hoisted. But 
sometimes the gale rises so suddenly that one or more 
of the dories to leeward fail to get back. The strong 
tides of the Banks and the shoal waters help to pile up 
the great combing seas, and very likely it is bitterly 
cold. What chance have the fishermen in their frail 
little crafts to withstand the keen blasts and rag- 
ing waters.? Not infrequently a dory with two dead 
bodies in it, or more often empty and perhaps tossed 
bottom-up by the waves, is all that tells the story of a 
lost boat and its crew. 

Every year, too, dories go hopelessly astray in the 
sudden winter fogs. The fishermen who fail to reach 
the schooner find themselves enveloped in a dense 
chilling mass of gloom, without food and without water. 
One would think each dory might carry a few emergency 
supplies, but the fishermen seem to prefer to take 
chances. When the fog lifts they have drifted many 
miles and are being borne by winds and currents they 
know not whither. Sometimes they make land or are 
picked up by a passing vessel; but usually, death 
comes after long days of hunger and thirst, hands frozen 
to oars, and possibly madness. When the schooner on 
which they sailed returns to port it enters the harbor 
with its flag at half-mast. 

Winter is the time especially to be dreaded, yet one 
of the most destructive gales in all the tragic list was 



i62 Highways and Byways of New England 

in the summer of 1873. It occurred on a Sunday, a 
very peaceful day in Gloucester, and no suspicion was 
aroused for the welfare of the fleet until Tuesday when 
news arrived of a terrible storm to the eastward all 
along the Canadian coast. Houses were blown down, 
trees torn up by the roots, and the tidal wave which 
accompanied the storm carried the wrecked vessels far 
above high water mark and left them stranded. 
Gloucester lost one hundred and twenty-eight men, a 
number greater by far than in any one previous gale. 
There is perhaps no other business which is pursued 
at such a fearful hazard to life and property. Insurance 
rates on the vessels are from eight to ten per cent, a 
year; and until comparatively recently the records 
showed an average annual loss of about sixteen vessels 
and one hundred and nine lives. The grimness of these 
figures is emphasized by the fact that though Gloucester 
contributed a large number of men to the army and 
navy during the Civil War, yet decidedly more of Its 
citizens were drowned on the fishing voyages than 
perished from the casualties of the war for the same 
period. But no matter how many victims the sea may 
claim, new men are always ready to take the vacant 
places, and there is no halt in the procession that leads 
to an ocean grave. It is to be noted, however, that for 
some time now there has been an almost complete 
elimination of the foundering at sea of vessels with 
entire crews. This is due to a change in the design of 
the fishing-vessels which at present have greater depth 




The harbor 



The Port of the Fishermen 163 

and a lighter stern than the old type. This has reduced 
the fatalities fully two-thirds. 

When a schooner is on a cruise the decision as to just 
where it shall fish depends a great deal on the depth of 
the water and the character of the bottom. By con- 
stant sounding with the lead line an expert captain gets 
to know the realm beneath the waters very thoroughly. 
The lead has a hollow at its lower extremity in which a 
little grease is inserted so that a sample of the sea 
bottom may be secured. The story is told of a certain 
old Nantucket skipper who could invariably tell just 
where he was by examining the soil his lead brought up. 
In order to perplex him, his crew once put some garden 
loam from the home island in the cup of the lead, made 
a pretense of sounding, and then asked the skipper to 
name the position of the vessel. The old fisherman 
tasted the dirt on the lead — his favorite method of 
determining its individuality — and suddenly exclaimed, 
"Nantucket's sunk, and here we are right over Ma'am 
Hackett's garden!" 

Whether the iish are decreasing or not is a question 
on which there is considerable difference of opinion. 
Life multiplies in the sea wonderfully, and at the same 
time the water is a scene of boundless destruction. 
There is perpetual warfare among the fishes, and the 
rulers of the deep are the strongest, the swiftest and 
the most voracious. The carnage is appalling; but 
without it the ocean would soon be unable to contain 
its inhabitants. Probably few fishes die a natural 



164 Highways and Byways of New England 

death, and some seem to have been created solely to 
devour others. It is doubtful if there is any species 
which does not feed on some other species or its own. 
Compared with the enormous consumption of fish by 
birds and by each other, the destruction due to the 
agency of man, with all his ingenious fishing devices, 
dwindles into insignificance; and yet it may be just 
this additional slaughter which disturbs nature's nice 
balance. 

The shore fisheries are certainly not what they used 
to be; but there are men well-versed in the business 
who claim that on the Banks, cod, hake and haddock 
are as plentiful as ever. Halibut, on the other hand, 
are acknowledged to be constantly decreasing. As to 
mackerel and herring it is not easy to decide. They are 
migratory fish that come and go, some years abundant 
and other years few; but why, no one knows. If there 
is a gamble in any form of fishing it is in the pursuit of 
the mackerel. A fleet fits out in the spring to meet 
these fish coming north, and half the vessels "won't 
get enough to pay their grub bill," while the rest will 
make good profits. 

The number of fishermen who go from Gloucester is 
about five thousand, but the majority of them are 
natives of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and New- 
foundland. As a class they are a whole-souled and 
admirable type of manhood, equal or superior in char- 
acter and thrift to the average of humanity on shore. 
Probably one-half of the five million dollars in the 



The Port of the Fishermen 165 

Gloucester savings banks is deposited to the credit of 
fishermen. Their usual earnings are about eight 
hundred dollars a year outside of board. Some of the 
captains clear five or six thousand dollars. The crews 
are made up of picked men, for skippers won't take 
weaklings or loafers. A good many of the men must 
have their blowout when they get ashore, but not more 
than a quarter of them are hard drinkers, and fully as 
large a proportion do not drink at all. Most of the 
blowsy, sodden loiterers one sees in the neighborhood of 
the Gloucester waterside are of a quite different class 
from the fishermen. They are what is known as 
"lumpers" — that is, they are shore workers who dis- 
charge cargoes and do other jobs about the vessels and 
wharves for a lump sum. 

These fishermen are rarely illiterates. Practically 
all of them are able to read and write and to transact 
without assistance the necessary business connected 
with their voyages. You will not find a man but that 
can figure out what Is coming to him and he knows the 
amount to a cent, though some of them might not be 
able to figure anything else. 

Perhaps their most remarkable trait Is courage, for 
they brave death with apparent unconcern. A Glouces- 
ter citizen told me of a voyage he made In a fishing 
schooner which encountered a fierce storm one night 
In a bay of Prince Edward's Island. They were en- 
veloped in Inky darkness and when they attempted to 
escape to the open sea the wind was dead ahead. A 



i66 Highways and Byways of New England 

seine boat in tow behind filled and turned over, and the 
jib broke loose from the mast and trailed in the water 
at the bow. Several attempts were made to get out on 
the jib-boom to cut away the retarding sail, but the 
waves broke so furiously over the bow that the men 
could not withstand the sledge-hammer blows of the 
toppling crests. The captain declared the boat could 
not weather the night. Yet not one man of the eighteen 
that composed the crew showed the white feather. The 
only uneasy creature on board was a dog in the cabin, 
and he was howling with fear. Every time he felt him- 
self dashed about, as the vessel careened wildly amid 
the waves, he let forth an agonizing yelp. 

The captain, on whose decisions depended the fate 
of the vessel, had concluded they could not beat around 
the headland Into the open sea, and that they were 
sure to go on the rocks. The only chance he saw for 
saving any of their lives was to turn and drive directly 
for the shore. He therefore jibbed, and a few minutes on 
the new course would have sent them all to the bottom. 
But after a moment he again turned the prow seaward 
and they finally succeeded in clearing the dangerous 
point — and through all the terrors of the night the crew 
never evinced the least symptom of fear. 

One curious characteristic of the sailors is their faith 
in superstitions. In particular, they have an Ineradi- 
cable belief in "Jonahs." A person or thing that causes 
a poor voyage is a Jonah. If a single new man joins a 
crew and there is a small catch of fish that cruise, he 




Cleaning fish 



The Port of the Fishermen 167 

is a Jonah. One man is known to have hoodooed three 
schooners thus in a twelve-month. Very strange in- 
stances are related of ships "losing their luck" when a 
certain man sailed on them, and regaining it when he left. 

If a cake of Ice is accidently dropped overboard 
when a vessel is preparing for a fishing trip the voyage 
will be fortunate; but If the hatch should fall Into the 
hold there will result some dire disaster. Scarcely less 
serious Is the trouble that will follow if, when the hatch 
Is taken off, it is turned bottom up. In such a case there 
is sure to be a good deal of excitement and apprehension 
on board. 

If you watch a ship out of sight you will never see it 
again. 

It is unlucky to have an umbrella brought on board. 

It is unlucky to drive nails on Sunday. 

Whistle for a breeze when it is calm; and if you 
would have the wind fair stick a knife in the after side 
of the main-mast. 

If a bee or a small bird comes on board It brings good 
luck; but 111 luck results when a hawk, owl, or crow 
alights In the rigging. 

A horsehoe nailed to the mast is a protection against 
witches. 

Have nothing to do with a man who comes on board 
with a black valise, and don't ship with him; for he Is 
sure to be a Jonah. 

Sunday sail, never fail, 
Friday sail. 111 luck and gale. 



i68 Highways and Byways of New England 

This last saying has lost much of its old-time influ- 
ence, and Friday is a not unusual sailing-day if the 
weather is favorable. 

On one of my rambles about the wharves I chanced 
to observe several cats on a schooner that was preparing 
to leave; and a member of the crew told me that it was 
very common for vessels to carry a few pet cats. "The 
sea seems to suit 'em very well," he said, "only they 
won't come on deck when it blows because it's too wet. 
In fine weather they're out around most of the time. 
We've got lots of rats and mice in the ship, but the 
cats don't often catch 'em there's so many places for 
'em to hide. In the spring we smoked the ship out with 
sulphur to smother 'em, but they wa'n't all killed, and 
they're gettin' plenty again. They eat up piles of things 
for the cook — oh, gracious, yes! and clothes. Some- 
times, too, they run over you when you're asleep and 
wake you up." 

The vessel next to that which carried the cats had 
just reached port with a cargo of salt, and its skipper 
attracted my attention. He was walking the deck in 
evident unrest, and a dent in his derby hat added to his 
aspect of hasty vigor. Presently an old Irishman 
appeared on the wharf above, and the skipper called 
out, "Are you one of the shovellers who are going to 
unload this cargo ,^" 

"Yes," the newcomer replied. 

"Well, there'll be three others," the skipper said, 
"and a pair of horses. You holler when you see them 



The Port of the Fishermen 169 

horses comin' — them black and blue horses with stripes 
around 'em," he added with a twinkle in his eyes. 

I did not await the advent of these remarkable 
beasts, but wandered into a near-by flake yard where a 
squad of men was busy spreading salted fish on the long 
lines of slatted rocks to dry. "Doesn't the salt have 
any bad effect on your hands?" I asked the workers. 

"No," the boss said, "it toughens 'em; and if you 
have a cut finger or anything of that sort the salt will 
help, it to heal. The cut may smart, but it's gettin' 
better just the same. Salt is healthy inside or out. I 
eat much as a pound a day. I can't get mackerel any 
too salt to suit me, and I just cover my beef or pork 
with it. The doctors used to say salt dried up the blood, 
but now they prescribe it as a medicine." 

A companion then told what his taste was in regard 
to salt. After that they compared notes as to how their 
fathers liked it, and started in on their grandfathers, 
when I concluded I didn't care to pursue the subject 
to any more remote generations and came away. On a 
neighboring street I stopped to speak with a short 
elderly man who was leaning in comfortable leisure 
against a telephone pole at the edge of the sidewalk. 
He proved to be one of Gloucester's notables — a success- 
ful merchant, and the inventor of various improvements 
in fishing apparatus. In the course of our chat he 
became reminiscent, and said, "When I was a boy, I 
had a mother and younger children to support, and I 
could only earn five dollars a month on shore; so I went 



170 Highways and Byways of New England 

to sea. The years slipped along and I made some 
money, and finally went down to Texas. There I lost 
seventy thousand dollars through a rascally relative, 
and then I come back here to start over again. One 
thing that I knew was needed was a good foghorn. 
Until about 1880 our fishing schooners didn't have any 
at all, and the men would blow a conch shell or a tin 
horn. Then a clumsy imported mechanical horn was 
introduced. Well, I spent two years with my head 
between my knees thinkin' it out — that's the reason 
I'm so round shouldered. But I was determined to 
make my foghorn so perfect it never could be improved 
any more; and I did." 

He had a combination store and manufactory not 
far away and took me to see it. There he sold all sorts 
of nautical supplies and handled more fish-hooks than 
any other concern in this country. It was a big ram- 
bling wooden structure, a curious labyrinth to explore, 
and the business had grown from a little shop that 
occupied only a few square feet of one floor. ''But I 
begun small," he said, "so if I didn't succeed I wouldn't 
have far to fall." 

Gloucester has not many men perhaps of this inven- 
tive type; but self-reliance, courage, and all-around 
ability are general, and it has as much of the romance 
suggestive of the days of fable as one could find any- 
where in our modern American world. 

Notes. — Gloucester is thirty-eight miles from Boston. There is 
macadam road all the way. The visitor finds much of interest in the 



The Port of the Fishermen 171 

old buildings of the city and its fishing industry and in the pictur- 
esque features of the adjacent shore and region inland. Norman's 
Woe, made famous by Longfellow's "Wreck of the Hesperus," is off 
the suburb of Magnolia. 

Half way to Boston is old Salem, which ranked tenth in size 
among the cities of the country at the end of the colonial period 
but is now the one hundred and twentieth. Here are many historical 
houses, including the birthplace of Hawthorne, and the old witch 
house, once the residence of Roger Williams, built in 1635. The city 
has one of the best historical museums in the country, in connection 
with which has been preserved the quaintest little colonial church 
in existence. 

Somewhat beyond Salem is Marblehead, one of the most interest- 
ing of American seashore resorts. The old town house was built in 
1727. Other noteworthy features of the place are the old fort, 
the old powder house, and the Skipper Ireson house. 

Of the Massachusetts coast towns north of Gloucester probably 
none would better repay a visit than Newburyport. Here are many 
old residences, of which the best known are the birthplace of Wil- 
liam Lloyd Garrison and the Lord Timothy Dexter mansion. The 
old cemetery merits a visit. On the beach in the vicinity is the 
Devil's Den Cave where during the witchcraft delusion the devils 
were supposed to dwell. 



IX 



THE LAND OF THE MINUTE MEN 

IN the tragic beginnings of the War for Independ- 
ence the minute men played a conspicuous part, 
and not only their deeds, but the name bestowed 
on them, appeal keenly to the imagination. They were 
called into being by the first Provincial Congress of 
Massachusetts which met in Concord in the autumn of 
1774. A conflict with the mother country was plainly 
at hand, and these bodies of minute men were to be 
ready at the briefest notice to hurry armed and 
equipped to points where danger threatened. 

The region especially identified with them is in and 
about Lexington and Concord and few historic spots 
are so easily accessible or so richly repay a visit. The 
former is only seventeen miles from Boston, and Con- 
cord is six miles beyond. My trip was made in the 
latter part of April at the very season of the old combat 
which was the precursor of the long war for freedom. 
I reached Lexington Common in the dusk of evening. 
The sod was turning green, and the elms were begin- 
ning to tassel out. Robins sang among the trees, 
and I could hear frogs piping in the marshes. I 
secured lodging near by, and then night came — a chilly, 
moonlit night, the exact counterpart, I fancied, of the 




The Lexingwn minute man 



The Land of the Minute Men 173 

night of the eighteenth of the same month back in 

1775- 
With the first gray of the morning I awoke and looked 

forth from my window out over the quiet village vague 

in the pallid dawn. That was just about the hour when 

the British troops had arrived on their march from 

Boston. They knew that the Massachusetts rebels had 

been collecting military supplies at Concord, and these 

supplies they proposed to destroy. Every farmer's 

barn in the place, the town house, the tavern shed, and 

the miller's loft, served as storerooms for provisions and 

munitions of war, and had the British succeeded in their 

undertaking they would have seriously crippled the 

incipient rebellion. Eight hundred strong, they 

stealthily left Boston at ten o'clock in the evening just 

as the moon rose, crossed in boats to Cambridge, and 

began their march. 

But their departure did not escape the attention of 
the Boston patriots, who promptly displayed a signal 
light from the spire of the Old North Church, and soon 
messengers on the mainland had mounted their horses 
and were galloping away along the country roads to 
carry the alarm. One of the messengers, Paul Revere, 
reached Lexington about midnight, and a few minutes 
later the meeting-house bell was ringing to bring to- 
gether the minute men. 

The meeting-house stood on the corner of the triangu- 
lar two-acre common where the road comes from 
Boston, and just across the highway to the east was 



174 Highways and Byways of New England 

Buckman's Tavern. Roundabout, fronting toward the 
green, were several farmhouses, and a blacksmith's 
shop. The common itself was rougher then than now, 
and instead of having its present fine elms it was com- 
paratively bare. There the minute men formed in 
ranks; but the cool, damp spring night was far from 
comfortable, and when messengers sent out on the 
Boston road returned and reported everything quiet, 
they concluded Revere had been mistaken. Those who 
lived near went home, but most, including their leader. 
Captain Parker, resorted to Buckman's Tavern. The 
night wore away and dawn was at hand when the men 
in the tavern heard galloping hoofs approaching. They 
hurried out, and a messenger halted his panting steed 
and announced that the British were close at hand. Cap- 
tain Parker ordered his men at once to the common, and 
had guns fired and drums beaten to rouse the region. 

The minute men, about fifty in number, formed in a 
double line near the northeast corner of the green, and 
at a little before five o'clock, the enemy appeared and 
marched onto the common from around the meeting- 
house. Major Pitcairn, the second in command of the 
British expedition, ordered the Americans to disperse, 
and some, impressed by his authority, and the over- 
powering numbers of the opposing force, were ready to 
obey. Captain Parker, however, declared he would 
shoot any man who left the ranks, and in conclusion 
said, "Stand your ground. Don't fire unless fired on; 
but if they mean to have a war let it begin here." 



The Land of the Minute Men 175 

When Major Pitcairn saw that the squad of country- 
men paid no attention to his command he discharged 
his pistol, and with angry oaths called on his men to 
fire. The first volley was sent over the Americans' 
heads, but the second rank fired right Into the midst of 
the band of farmers. The Lexington men now scattered, 
and in a desultory way discharged their guns at the 
smoke-enveloped enemy, but inflicted no serious dam- 
age. Of their own number. Captain Parker and six of 
his followers were killed. 

The green has continued unaltered in size from 
colonial days until now, and from It can be seen several 
of the same dwellings that were there then. The most 
notable of these is the Harrington house, to the front 
door of which Jonathan Harrington, sorely wounded, 
dragged himself after the fight and died on the thres- 
hold in the arms of his wife. 

I chatted with a town employee who was picking up 
twigs on the common and mentioned that I intended to 
visit Concord. "Oh! you're going to the Holy City, 
are you?" he commented. 

That was his way of recognizing Concord to be the 
Mecca of all pilgrims interested in history or literature. 
My route thither was by the old hill road which was 
the road traversed by the British. The country along 
the way is still rustic, and though there is less wood- 
land than at the time of the Revolution forest patches 
are by no means lacking, and there are numerous 
brushy, ruinous stone walls, and many substantial 



176 Highways and Byways of New England 

old-time homes with the portly chimneys that show 
they date back to fireplace days. The weather was 
sunshiny and breezy, jubilant song sparrows trilled in 
the thickets, and I saw frequent blue-birds and heard 
the gentle call of the phoebes. Human life was also in 
evidence; for the farmers were drawing wood, getting 
out fertilizer, and ploughing, just as their predecessors 
in the region had done at that season for generations, 
even back to the time of the minute men. 

Concord is a pleasant country town in a mild, 
alluvial valley. The valley is not in itself particularly 
attractive, but the village with its various venerable 
houses, its white, wooden churches, and serene common 
is wholly delightful. So are all the villages of the 
region that have not been overrun by suburban Boston. 

On my walk from Lexington I had passed a number 
of roadside inscriptions, each locating the scene of 
some important episode in the old British raid. The 
one that was perhaps the most interesting marked the 
spot where Paul Revere was captured. After warning 
Lexington he had resumed his ride accompanied by 
another courier, and they had not gone far when they 
were joined by Dr. Prescott of Concord who had learned 
of the foray and was hastening home with the news. 
They gave the alarm at every house as they passed 
until they were brought to a sudden halt by a recon- 
noiterlng party of the enemy. Prescott was the only 
one of the three to escape. He jumped his horse over 
a wall, and by a circuitous route reached Concord 




^ 



The Land of the Minute Men 177 

about three o'clock. So there was time to get out the 
minute men and to secrete many of the military stores. 

When at length the British came, the minute men 
fell back across the North Bridge, and the enemy took 
possession of the village. They began to burn such 
spoils as they could lay their hands on, and the smoke 
rose in a cloud over the common. But they destroyed 
very little compared with what remained untouched. 
For instance, one of the dwellings they ransacked was 
Colonel Barrett's. Some of the stores that they thought 
to find there had been transported to the woods, and 
the rest had been concealed in casks in the garret. 
Over the casks Mrs. Barrett had put a quantity of 
feathers, thus averting any suspicion, and no search 
was made beneath. On the premises of another citizen 
they found sixty barrels of flour. They beat open 
several of the barrels and the flour was scattered around 
the road so that the ground looked as if there had been 
a fall of snow; but most of the barrels were dumped 
unbroken into an adjacent mill pond. As soon, how- 
ever, as the British were gone, the Yankees drew off 
the pond and got the barrels out onto dry ground. 
Very little water had penetrated them and the flour 
was only slightly injured. 

Fighting began in the middle of the morning at the 
North Bridge, and the three companies of British 
troopers who had been posted there retreated in con- 
fusion to the town. The commanders of the expedition 
began to be alarmed, and after some uncertain marching 



178 Highways and Byways of New England 

and counter-marching the entire force started for 
Boston. They had gone scarcely more than a mile 
when they were ambushed and the retreat became a 
rout. Their pursuers preserved little or no order, and 
every man chose his own time and mode of attack, 
taking shelter behind buildings, trees, and stone walls. 
The whole countryside was now aroused, and the In- 
vaders might have been all killed or captured had not 
reinforcements reached them. The fresh troops formed 
in a hollow square, and into the shelter of this square 
their comrades hastened, many of them so overcome 
with weariness and heat that they lay on the ground 
with tongues hanging out and panting like a tired dog. 
The fight ended only when they reached Charlestown, 
where they were protected by the guns of their fleet. 
Nearly one-fourth of those who started on the expedi- 
tion had been killed, and the American loss in killed 
was about seventy. 

That morning, when Major Pitcairn reached Con- 
cord, he had called for a glass of brandy, and as he 
stirred it with his finger, said, "I mean to stir the 
damned Yankee blood as I stir this, before night!" 

He succeeded, but not with the results he had 
expected. 

Concord's most important point of Revolutionary 
attraction is the old bridge where was fired "the shot 
that was heard round the world," though, really, I 
think Lexington has first claim to that shot. The 
present bridge is a simple open structure, of much the 



The Land of the Minute Men 179 

same appearance as the one which figured in the fight, 
but the road across It Is no longer a highway and comes 
to a sudden end a Httle beyond the stream. 

Not far away is "The Old Manse," which at the time 
of the Revolution was the dwelling of Ralph Waldo 
Emerson's grandfather, the Concord minister. From a 
window the reverend gentleman watched the combat 
at the bridge. The house is a ponderous mansion, far 
back from the road and looks lonely, unsociable, and 
even gloomy. Here Emerson himself lived when he 
first came to Concord in 1834, Most of his early life 
had been spent in Boston; but he craved "solitude," 
and he resorted to Concord rather than to some other 
country town because it was an ancestral home of the 
family. In the Manse he wrote many poems and his 
first published book; but after two years he moved to 
a house on the opposite outskirts of the village. This 
house, which continued to be his home until his death, 
is a white. Immaculate dwelling of generous propor- 
tions, open to the sun, and having a certain stately 
cheerfulness, quite in keeping with the character of its 
famous occupant. 

In the spring of 1843 Hawthorne came to live in the 
Old Manse bringing with him his bride, and he gave the 
house its name. The villagers seldom saw him, for he 
avoided the town in his walks and made no efforts to 
cultivate acquaintances. It was his habit to bathe 
every summer evening, after nightfall. In the river near 
the old bridge where the battle was fought. The three 



i8o Highways and Byways of New England 

years he spent at the Manse were for him a period of 
distressing hardship, and he was compelled to return 
to his native town of Salem where he received an ap- 
pointment in the Custom House. Six years later, after 
after having achieved much literary success and a 
measure of financial reward, he again resorted to Con- 
cord and bought and remodelled a house which he 
called "The Wayside." It is a peculiar and rather 
shapeless structure not far from the home of Emerson, 
with a steep slope behind it clad with evergreens. 

Hawthorne's next neighbor to the south was Ephraim 
Bull, the originator of the Concord Grape. Mr. Bull 
had moved from Boston to Concord on account of his 
health, and grape-raising became a passion with him. 
He planted in his garden the best varieties he could 
obtain, but none of these could be relied on for a crop, 
even in favorable seasons. Wild grapes abounded in 
the vicinity, and from one of the seeds of these, dropped 
perhaps by a bird, there sprang up a vine on the borders 
of the garden that bore fruit of uncommonly good 
flavor, with little of the foxy taste usual in its kind. 
So Mr. Bull gave it care and cultivation, planted some 
of its seeds, and watched and waited. Only one of the 
seedlings proved worth saving; but that was the 
famous Concord. He picked the first grapes from it in 
1849, and the original vine still grows, while its progeny 
have gone everywhere. 

To the north, Hawthorne's nearest neighbor was 
Bronson Alcott, who continued to occupy "Orchard 



The Land of the Minute Men i8l 

House," as he called it, for a considerable period, though 
his habit or fate during most of his previous married 
life had been to move on an average about once a year. 
In the library at Orchard House were held the tirst 
sessions of the Concord School of Philosophy, and in 
that same room Mr. Alcott's daughter Louisa wrote 
several of her famous books for children. The house 
seemed to me a somewhat finicky structure of the bird- 
cage order, but it was shadowed by an ancient elm of 
noble size and proportions that relieved the architec- 
tural shortcomings of the dwelling. 

Of the group of literary notables who in the middle 
of the last century made Concord their home, Thoreau, 
the most peculiar genius of them all, is the only one 
who was Concord born. In 1837, at the age of twenty, 
after graduating from Harvard, he for a short time 
taught a school in his native town, and then he applied 
himself to the business in which his father was engaged 
— the manufacture of lead pencils. He believed he 
could make a better pencil than was then in use; but 
when he succeeded and his friends congratulated him 
that he had now opened his way to fortune he responded 
that he would never make another pencil. "Why 
should I ? " he said. " I would not do again what I have 
done once." 

So he turned his attention to miscellaneous studies 
and to nature. When he wanted money he earned it by 
some piece of manual labor agreeable to him, such as 
building a boat or a fence, planting, or surveying. He 



1 82 Highways and Byways of New England 

never married, rarely went to church, did not vote, 
refused to pay a tax to the state, ate no flesh, drank no 
wine, did not use tobacco; and In the estimation of his 
fellow-townsmen he was for a long time simply an 
oddity, but they at length came to revere and admire him. 

His senses were remarkably acute. He could pace 
sixteen rods more accurately than another man could 
measure them with rod and chain. He could find his 
path in the woods at night, he said, better by his feet 
than his eyes. He could estimate the weight of a pig 
or a calf like a dealer. From a box containing a bushel 
or more of loose pencils, he could take up with his 
hands just a dozen pencils at every grasp. 

It was his custom to spend a portion of each day in 
the fields or woods or on the Concord River. He knew 
the country like a fox or a bird. Under his arm he 
carried an old music book in which to press plants, and 
his pockets contained his diary, a spy-glass, microscope, 
jackknife, and twine. If he saw in a tree a hawk's or a 
squirrel's nest that attracted him he climbed up to 
investigate, and he often waded into pools after water 
plants. 

The best known episode in his life is the experience 
he embodied in the book to which he gave the title of 
"Walden." He was dissatisfied with society, and 
wanted to prove that he could get along comfortably 
depending wholly on himself for providing food and 
other necessaries, and have plenty of time for enjoy- 
ment. So in March, 1845, at the age of twenty-eight, 



The Land of the Minute Men 183 

he "borrowed an ax and went to the woods by Walden 
Pond." This pond Is two or three miles south of the 
village, an Irregular sheet of water with an average 
breadth of half a mile. It Is without visible inlet or 
outlet and is remarkable for Its depth and purity. 

Thoreau bought an old shanty, tore It down, and 
carried it piecemeal to the pond on a wheelbarrow. He 
did all the work of making the house himself, including 
the digging of a cellar; and the entire cost was less 
than thirty dollars. The cabin had no lock, no curtain 
to the window, and belonged to nature almost as much 
as Its owner did. Here he dwelt for a little over two 
years, and then, he says: "I left the woods for as good 
a reason as I went there. Perhaps It seemed to me that 
I had several more lives to live, and could not spare 
any more time for that one." 

The cabin became the property of a farmer who took 
it away from the woods to his own premises; but the 
spot where it stood is marked by a cairn of stones, to 
which every lover of Thoreau's genius who goes thither 
adds a stone from the shore of the near cove. Ap- 
parently the borders of the pond present much the same 
aspect they did in Thoreau's time. Some portions of 
the slopes along the water are still finely wooded, but 
a little farther back are forlorn cut-off wastes growing 
up to scrub oak. The pond's greatest charm of course 
lies in past associations; and it is just this, beyond all 
else, which lends fascination to all the region of the 
land of the minute men. 



184 Highways and Byways of New England 

Notes. — ^The main roads in the region are macadam. These and 
the steam roads and the trollies offer unusual facilities to the 
sightseer. Boston is near at hand with its many attractions, his- 
torical and architectural as well as those connected with business 
and pleasure. Cambridge, too, can be easily visited, where, among 
other objects of interest, are Harvard College, the oldest and best 
known institution of learning in the United States; the elm under 
which Washington took command of the American army in July, 
1775; the homes of Longfellow and Lowell; and Mount Auburn, 
the oldest cemetery in the United States, and in which are buried 
many famous persons. Another place particularly worthy of a 
visit is Brookline, a wonderland of beautiful estates and charming 
houses. It is the wealthiest town in America. 



X 



AUTUMN ON CAPE COD 

MY acquaintance with the cape began at Sand- 
wich where It starts Its outthrust into the 
Atlantic, and I travelled in an irregular way, 
with frequent stops, to its very tip. Autumn had 
come. The days were still warm, but the nights were 
decidedly chilly, and early in my jaunt a man whom I 
interviewed in his cranberry bog informed me that there 
had been a white frost on the low grounds the previous 
night. 

"I was afeard our crop would be hurt," he said; "so 
I was out till most twelve o'clock keepin' some brush 
fires goln' around the edges of the bog. The fires ain't 
expected to warm the air much, but they make a smoke 
which settles over the level hollow of the bog and Is a 
kind of protecting blanket. 

"We begin pickin' here early in September, and the 
last of the berries ain't gathered until toward the end 
of October. Often the bogs are three or four miles from 
a village, and then the pickers have to make an early 
start. They all go together in a truck cart. It's quite 
a ride, I tell yer, bumping along, and they say they feel 
as If they hadn't had any breakfast by the time they 
get there. We pay thirty cents an hour for grown 



1 86 Highways and Byways of New England 

people and twenty cents for children; and they're 
expected to hustle and keep steady at it. We ain't got 
no use for loafers." 

While he was speaking two men carrying guns came 
into view on a road at some distance from us, and I 
called his attention to them. "They've been huntin' " 
he affirmed, "but I don't believe they've had much 
luck. They're about forty years too late for first class 
sport. Why, when I was a boy, you could go down on 
the ma'shes and get a back-load of birds in a little while 
— plover and curlew and snipes and such. Oh, Lord, 
yes! all you had to do was to get behind a stone wall 
and shoot 'em. I remember, too, when you could go 
to the beach with a pole and line, and in half an hour, 
standing right on the land, catch all the cod, mackerel, 
and haddock you wanted. Now fish are scarce, and so 
are the ma'sh birds, but we ain't worrying about that 
if we get a good yield of cranberries." 

My wanderings at length brought me to the elbow 
of the cape, where I concluded to try walking on the 
beach which fronts the Atlantic in an almost straight 
and unobstructed course for a score of miles. I had 
left the main road to go thither when I paused to speak 
to a weather-reddened old sailor who was In his back 
yard visiting with his pig. The pig was standing on its 
hind legs and looking out of a little window in the rough 
hovel that served it for shelter. 

"Ain't that a nice pig?" the man observed proudly. 
"It's just as tame and gentle as can be. There's a boy 




A relic of earlier da\s 



Autumn on Cape Cod 187 

from my next neighbor's who Hkes to get into the pen 
and play with the pig. He used to take it up in his lap, 
but it's got so darned heavy now that wont do. 

"I want to show you a pretty good flock of chickens. 
Chick, chick, chick! come on, you chaps! I bought the 
eggs in the spring for Plymouth Rocks; but you see the 
chickens are all colors. There's Wyandottes and 
Rhode Island Reds and I don't know what not. 

"We're havin' fine weather now; but Sunday and a 
Monday it blew a living gale here. That was the line 
storm. We always get a specially heavy one about the 
time the sun crosses the equator. The weather has 
been kind of unfavorable one way or another all the 
year. We never had such late spring frosts and such 
a long summer drought. Heavens! we were all dried 
up here one time. I planted beans and they stayed in 
the ground seven weeks before a single sprout showed. 
Once in a while we'd get a little make-believe of a 
shower that would last five or ten minutes and then go 
away. So the crops have had a hard time. Did you 
say you was going to the shore .^ I George! I'll hitch 
up and carry you." 

Pretty soon he was ready and we started. "This 
horse," he said, "is just as good-natured and gentle as 
my pig is. I never use a whip. He ain't fast, but he's 
stiddy, and he'll go jog-jogging along same as he's 
goin' now all day." 

Scarcely was this eulogy finished when the horse 
shied a little, and my companion exclaimed: "What in 



1 88 Highways and Byways of New England 

blazes do you see there! He thought he saw something 
over in those bushes." 

I called his attention to some low vines that overran 
the ground, whose leafage was brightened with the 
sparkle of many little red berries. "Those are hog 
cranberries," he said. "Sometimes fellers come from 
Boston and pick tons of 'em. I asked the fellers once, 
'What d'you dew with them old things.^' 

"They told me they made medicine out of 'em. Well, 
I suppose people'll buy and take any sort of a mean- 
tasting stuff if it's called medicine." 

At last the rutted, rambling roadway came to an 
end near three lighthouses standing In a group on the 
verge of a sand bluff that dropped In a steep slant to the 
sea a hundred feet below. I parted from the old sailor, 
and half walking, half sliding, descended the bank. 
Now I had old ocean before me, and my ears were filled 
with the mellow, thunderous roar of Its great breakers 
pounding on the narrow beach. For the sake of the 
walking I kept to the damp hard margin next to the 
sea, though often compelled to beat a hasty retreat 
when a bigger wave than usual sent its foam scurrying 
up to my path. I had the company of many vessels 
sailing along the horizon, but saw not a human being, 
nor even a bird, except one lonely sandpiper flitting 
over the huge, curling breakers. Mile after mile I went 
onward, always with that same wild, exhilarating 
turmoil of the sea on my right hand, and the yellow sand 
bank looming on the left. As a whole the scene was 



Autumn on Cape Cod 189 

singularly desolate and monotonous, and the beach 
itself furnished no variety save that here and there were 
strewings of pebbles, a few shells and fragments of 
seaweed, and at rare intervals a bit of wreckage. 

Finally I came to a hollow that made a break in the 
sand-wall, and I climbed to the upland. The sun had 
disappeared In a low, western cloudbank, and a gray 
gloom had overspread the earth. A faintly marked 
road, which I presently discovered, seemed to promise 
a safe conduct through the woods to the inhabited 
portion of the Cape on the west shore, and I stepped 
along it in haste lest In the increasing darkness I should 
lose my way. Night had come in earnest when I 
arrived at Wellfleet whose thoroughfares were bright- 
ened to some slight degree by a scattering of kerosene 
street lights. I found a hotel and had supper. After- 
ward I sat down in the office where were the landlord 
and one of his local friends whom he addressed famil- 
iarly as "Mac." Some mosquito bites that had been 
Inflicted on my hands during the day were still painful, 
and when the landlord observed me rubbing the sore 
spots he divined what was the matter. 

"There's mosquitoes here on the Cape the whole 
year round," he said, "and I do believe Wellfleet Is the 
worst place on God's earth for 'em. I tried to do a little 
gardening last summer, but I couldn't. The mosquitoes 
drove me Into the house." 

"And we only had an average crop of 'em," Mac 
commented. 



190 Highways and Byways of New England 

"No matter what hour of the day or night I went to 
my garden they were right there waiting for me," 
the landlord continued. "They ain't fussy about 
workin' overtime." 

"They have two gangs," Mac affirmed; "or perhaps 
there's three and they work in eight hour shifts." 

"I thought they didn't sing as much as usual this year," 
the landlord said. "They'd get right onto you and if 
they found you a little bit tough they'd go off and set 
down in front of you and whet their bills and then come 
to jab again." 

"I've been to some of our low meadows where they'd 
almost carry you off," Mac said, "Seems to me one of 
those meadows would make a good penetentiary. Just 
tie your criminal there and let 'em punish him." 

"He'd go crazy and they'd kill him in a little while," 
the landlord declared. "Up in the Maine woods I've 
found 'em pretty thick along the trout brooks, but if 
you built a smudge they wouldn't bother you. Here, 
though, they are on to all those dodges. They are a 
useless pest and ain't even good for fertilizer. I know 
a feller who said he killed a lot and put 'em in the rows 
where he was plantin', but it didn't make things grow 
a bit better." 

The next morning was dull and rainy, and though 
the hotel cook was very sure at breakfast time that the 
rain was "going to dry off" at once, the weather con- 
tinued dubious until late in the afternoon. Then the 
mists lifted a little and I went for a ramble about the 




Earning his living 



Autumn on Cape Cod 191 

town. It is a very tidy village, just as are all the other 
Cape Cod villages. Indeed, the snugness of the Cape 
homes is phenomenal; for though the houses are 
usually small they rarely fail to be in good repair, well- 
painted and neat in every respect. They plainly denote 
a thrifty people; yet life seems to be peculiarly lei- 
surely, and there is very little activity apparent on the 
roads, in the fields, or anywhere else. 

A chance acquaintance of considerable experience 
on the Cape, in commenting on these characteristics, 
said: "I know an old Cape Cod sea captain who'd 
been going on voyages ever since he was a young man, 
and he begun to consider retiring. Well, his wife 
thought that was the best thing for him to do. So he 
got a little place and fixed it up and stocked it with a 
few hens, and when that was done he had thirty-five 
dollars in cash and a small nest-egg in the bank. Time 
passed along, and now and then he'd go to the wharf 
and catch what flounders he wanted, or he'd make a 
trip down the bay and rake a few clams, or steal a few 
oysters. He exchanged hens' eggs for groceries, and he 
raised a little something in his garden. Nothin' 
worked on the place but the hens. For seven years he 
went on in the same easy way and found then that his 
cash in hand was about the same as at the beginning 
while his bank deposit had increased twenty-eight 
dollars. 

"That's typical of Cape Cod. The people don't care 
to exert themselves. There's no hurry and no worry. 



192 Highways and Byways of New England 

They live simply and the necessaries can be had with 
astonishingly little effort. A man who goes out raking 
up clams can earn from three to six dollars a day. But 
he can't go when it's rainy, and he can't go when it 
blows hard, and other days he won't go because those 
are nice days to loaf. Offer him a job on shore at two 
dollars a day and he'll tell you to go fly up your flue. 
Such wages look so small to him he feels insulted. 

"The water has been the Cape's chief dependence 
for a living in the past, and I don't know but it always 
will be. We can't have manufactories because the 
people won't work, and we can't prosper at farming 
because the soil is too poor. 

"One reason for the absence of serious poverty is 
that money don't slip away so easily as it does in most 
regions. The inhabitants are safe-guarded by the fact 
that there are no places of amusement, and a man has 
very few chances to spend his earnings foolishly. But 
in the days when every town along here had its fishing 
fleet the sailors were a class who, as soon as they reached 
port, were in a hurry to get rid of all their cash. They 
wouldn't ship again till it was gone. That's because 
they was afraid they might be drowned next voyage 
and so lose any money they'd saved and get no benefit 
from it. 

"You may notice that the Cape folks are great hands 
for telling yarns; and it's a curious fact that when a 
voyager comes home and tells of the wonderful things 
he's seen and heard and done, his listeners begin to 



Autumn on Cape Cod 193 

think after a while that the experiences were their own, 
and they tell them as such. But they are a well posted 
people. You see, after supper, they haven't much of 
anything to do only to sit down and read the paper, and 
so they pick up at least a smattering knowledge of most 
everything. They are a very honest people, too, and 
always do as they promise, though, I must say they 
make the closest trades of any set I ever knew." 

The chief industry of Wellfleet seemed to be the 
getting of quahaugs — a deep water clam. "When I 
first visited this region about three months ago," one 
of the transients at my hotel said, "some men in the 
hotel office got to speaking of quahaugs. The word was 
new to me, and it struck my ears very funny. 'What 
kind of a hog was that?' I asked — 'a cow hog?' 

"'No, no!' they says, 'a quahaug,' and went on 
talking. 

"I didn't want to show my ignorance, so I kept still; 
but pretty soon I drew one of the fellows outside and 
asked him to explain. 'I've never heard of any such 
hog,' I says. 'Now what is it?' 

"And he stooped down and picked up a shell that 
lay by the piazza, and he says, 'There's a quahaug 
shell;' and it was nothing but a clam shell. I've eaten 
lots of those clams in Boston; and, just think! they 
claim some of 'em are a hundred years old! Probably 
those are the tough bitter yellow ones you find in your 
chowder sometimes." 

After leaving Wellfleet my next stop was at a village 



194 Highways and Byways of New England 

where, late one afternoon, I found shelter In the home 
of a fisherman. While we were eating supper that 
evening we fell to discussing the weather, and the 
fisherman said: "We have it pretty rough here in 
winter. The wind does blow like fury and chills you 
to the bone; and yet the thermometer seldom gets 
down to zero. I s'pose it's the dampness that makes 
the cold so penetrating. If we had it as cold here as 
they do up in New Hampshire we couldn't live on the 
Cape at all." 

"Everybody's glad to see spring come," Mrs. Fisher- 
man affirmed. "That's a great time here for shipping 
Mayflowers. Some families will go all hands and spend 
the whole day picking the arbutus under the pines. 
At night they bunch up what they've gathered, put 
damp moss or cotton round the stems, and in the 
morning send it on the train. Herbert Rogers earnt 
enough last spring that way to buy him a suit of 
clothes." 

When we left the supper table the fisherman lit his 
pipe and sat down for a comfortable smoke. "Don't 
you think it makes a man old to smoke.?" Mrs. Fisher- 
man asked me. "I tell Charlie he'd be ten years 
younger if he didn't smoke." 

"Cap'n Grozier ain't a smoker," her husband com- 
mented, "and he don't look very young." 

"Why Charlie!" Mrs. Fisherman exclaimed, "he's 
eighty-five. You couldn't expect hitn to look young." 

"I do' know but you'd like to hear about a little 



Autumn on Cape Cod 195 

mix-up I had a while ago with a shark," Mr. Fisherman 
remarked. 

"Oh, for pity's sake, CharHe, don't tell that!" his 
wife interrupted. 

But he went on in spite of her protest, and said: 
"I caught one that would weigh two hundred pounds 
in my net," he said, "and when I'd got him up part 
way over the edge of my boat he nipped me just above 
the knee by the slack of my pants. I felt his teeth 
graze my leg. I gorry! if he'd been a very little nigher 
he'd have got me! Well, I reached for my sheath-knife 
and cut off his head. Then I tried to open his mouth, 
but his teeth were clinched and I couldn't. So I walked 
around in the boat tending to my work with that head 
clinging to my pants. 'Twa'n't comfortable, and finally, 
in order to get free, I cut off the piece of cloth that was 
in the shark's mouth." 

"I think it would be more interesting if you'd tell 
about the big school of blackfish that was caught here," 
Mrs. Fisherman suggested. 

"What sort of fish are those.?" I inquired. 

"They're something like small whales," the fisherman 
responded, "and I've seen 'em that'd weigh a ton. 
They're no good to eat, but we cut off the fat and boil 
it in great big kittles by the shore for the oil. We used 
to get 'em every year, but now only once in a long time. 
The biggest capture we ever made numbered fourteen 
hundred and five. They go just like a flock of sheep, 
and all you have to do is to get behind 'em with your 



196 Highways and Byways of New England 

boats and drive 'em up on shore and lance 'em. When 
it was known that this school of blackfish was in the 
bay every boat in town went out to drive 'em. The 
minister was there with the rest of us, and he give a 
little girl a Bible afterward for tellin' him about the 
blackfish In time so he could go. We all hollered and 
pounded the sides of the boats and made as much noise 
as we could. Everybody but the minister was swearing 
and ripping out the toughest words they knew. You'd 
thought they'd been ashamed to use such language 
before him, but he was so excited he didn't notice It. 
Besides, he was making such a racket himself that he 
had no chance to hear the rest. Well, he had a good 
strong voice and was a great hollerer anyway. He was 
shouting: 'Praise the Lord! Bless the Lord for so 
great a gift to this little place.' 

"In two hours the fish was all run up on the shore 
and killed, and when the time come to divide profits 
there was fifty dollars for every man who had a hand 
In the job, and that was most all the men In town." 

After a pause the fisherman mentioned that he used 
to go "wracking." One wreck he worked on was the 
Jason laden with brown sugar. The cargo was still in 
good condition, and the wreckers were paid five dollars 
a day for their labor In getting It out. "When I begun 
on the job," the fisherman said, "I took my dinner In a 
three pint pail; but I noticed that every one else carried 
a great big bucket, and that bucket didn't go home 
empty either. So the second day I carried my dinner 



Autumn on Cape Cod 197 

in a pail that would hold twenty quarts, and as I was 
goin' on board the boss said, 'What you got in that 
pail, Charlie?' 

" 'My dinner,' I says. 

"'Your appetite increases,' he says — 'what for — 
sugar?' 

"'Yes,' says I. 

"'Well, it's all right,' says he, 'only don't bring a 
barrel tomorrow.' 

"Every night I carried home a pailful, and by the 
time the work was done I had half a hogshead of that 
sugar." 

A neighbor happened in just as this story came to an 
end. He was an elderly man, and after he had sat and 
talked for a while he fell asleep. The fisherman like- 
wise napped off, and a stentorian snoring sounded from 
the adjoining sitting-room whither Mrs. Fisherman had 
gone and settled down in a rocking-chair. 

It was not late, but I thought the indications were 
that bedtime had arrived, and I retired. During the 
night the wind rose, and I learned at the breakfast 
table that because it was a landward breeze the fisher- 
man had got up at four o'clock to go to the shore and 
pick up the driftwood it brought in. 

My journey on the Cape ended at Provincetown where 
the tip of the peninsula hooks around like the clutch of 
a hand. The town snugs along the inner shore in a 
thin line of marvellously narrow and crooked streets; 
and behind it are sandhills and marshes and stunted 



198 Highways and Byways of New England 

forest, and then a waste of dunes that rise in vast barren 
billows and sweep away in sublime dreariness to the 
Atlantic. Neither here nor anywhere else did the Cape 
impress me as being strikingly beautiful, but it has an 
interesting individuality, and certainly its inhabitants 
are most picturesquely original. 

Notes. — The main road the entire length of the Cape is state 
macadam. Quaint old Provincetown has the most attractions in 
and around it of any of the Cape towns, but interest is not lacking 
wherever one wanders. While in this corner of the state the traveller 
should visit Plymouth. The Mayflower cast anchor oif shore here 
December 21st, 1620, and you can see the identical rock on which 
the Pilgrims set foot when the first boat load of them came to land. 
The town has a notable historical museum, and many ancient 
houses, and every sojourner will wish to see the quaint old cemetery 
on Burial Hill. 



XI 



NANTUCKET DAYS 



NANTUCKET has the reputation of being an 
island of enchantment — not that it has any 
special scenic charm, but it is a fragment of 
New England comparatively little affected by the 
changing customs and fashions of the mainland, and 
with a quaintness and flavor of the past in its life and 
homes that are all Its own. For the most part it is a 
windswept moor diversified with lagoons and ponds. 
Nowhere does it rise to any striking height, and the 
trees, except in the villages, are few and stunted. 

The first settlers established themselves on the island 
in 1661. Thirty years later they began to send out 
vessels after whales, and for a long time Nantucket 
led the world in this industry. Its whaleshlps in their 
cruises visited all the waters of the globe. They wan- 
dered far from the lanes of commerce, and their captains 
discovered no less than thirty of the islands of the 
Pacific. One Nantucket whaleship was lost on the coast 
of the Fiji Islands, and all the crew, with a single excep- 
tion, were murdered and probably eaten. At one time 
Nantucket had nearly fourscore whaling vessels, and 
voyages after oil continued to absorb most of Its energy 
until a cheaper lighting fluid was found in petroleum. 



2CX) Highways and Byways of New England 

Ten years later, in 1868, the last outward-bound whaler 
crossed its bar. 

When the steamer on which one journeys to the 
island from the mainland has touched at Martha's 
Vineyard and has again turned its prow seaward you 
can see nothing ahead but the broad blue level of the 
ocean, and some time passes before Nantucket's low 
mass lifts above the horizon. As soon as you arrive in 
port you observe among the medley of buildings on 
the wharves many ancient fish-houses, and there see 
little fishing vessels and power boats, dories, and 
pleasure craft on the waters all around. Other boats 
large and small are hauled out on the shore, laid up or 
being repaired. The town huddles about the wharves 
on land that terraces steeply upward, and as you look 
toward it from the harbor you see its numerous roofs 
and chimneys amid the green foliage of the trees, and 
the dominating tower of the old Unitarian Church with 
its gilt-domed cupola. 

A little stretch of Main Street in the heart of the 
town is bordered by small stores and other commercial 
or public buildings. It is arched with elms, and on the 
outer edge of the sidewalks are occasional settees. Here 
was serenity and protection from boisterous winds and 
burning sunshine, and people seemed very ready to 
take full advantage of the inducements offered for 
loitering. The paving is of cobblestones, and a number 
of the other streets and lanes are similarly paved, while 
on the outskirts there are rutted roads in the natural 



Nantucket Days 20i 

sandy earth. Nearly all the streets are both narrow 
and crooked, and some of the byways and footpath 
alleys are quite surprising in their picturesque un- 
certainty. 

The houses are mostly wooden with sides and roofs 
of shingles, and many of them, built by the old sea 
captains, are of generous size, two or three stories high. 
Paint Is used sparingly, and when you view the place 
from the hills in the rear it appears strangely gray. 
Yet the houses are well-cared-for, and it is evident that 
the people are prosperous and live in comfort. Possibly 
this is because their isolation offers comparatively few 
opportunities for spending. Fashion and society are 
not so urgently enticing as on the mainland, and wealth 
does not set a pace which those with more circum- 
scribed incomes feel impelled to imitate. The majority 
of the houses are evidently old and they have small- 
paned windows and the great chimneys of fireplace 
days. They are set close along the streets, and have a 
habit of thrusting a porch out on the sidewalk to which 
steps lead down from the front door in either direction. 
The town is very compact, yet there is space about its 
homes for bits of lawn, hedges, vegetable gardens, and 
an abundance of gay flowers. 

The present population of the island Is less than three 
thousand. It had ten thousand in the heyday of its 
prosperity. When whaling was abandoned a large por- 
tion of the younger inhabitants migrated to other locali- 
ties and real estate depreciated so that houses were 



202 Highways and Byways of New England 

frequently sold for from one to two hundred dollars. 
At length, however, the island began to develop as a 
summer resort, and its prosperity was to some degree 
restored. "But it's not what it used be," one of the 
elders afhrmed to me. "The people have backslid from 
the old habits of thrifty Industry. Lots of 'em will do 
anything to get shet of hard work. In summer they 
fetch out their teams and set all day on their behinds 
in front of the post office looking for a chance to drive 
some one around. One day a man may make twenty- 
five cents, and another day two or three dollars, and the 
next day he may not take in a blame cent. In winter 
they live off each other, and in their spare time gather 
at their loafing places to spin yarns." 

I had the good fortune to lodge in one of the fine old 
mansions. It has much panelled woodwork inside and 
large low-ceiled rooms with the heavy timbers of the 
framework showing here and there. On the first even- 
ing of my sojourn I found my landlord and his wife at 
liberty and I inquired about the use of a platform with 
a railing round It which was perched on the peak of a 
neighboring roof. 

"That's what we call a lookout or walk," the land- 
lord said. "Nearly all the old-fashioned houses had 
'em when I was a boy fifty years ago. Our harbor here 
was a busy place, and people would often slip up to 
their lookout with a spyglass to see what was going on 
down on the water. They might go up there for other 
reasons, too. Suppose a man had a row with his wife — 




A Nantucket harbor nook 



Nantucket Days 203 

one of 'em would very likely go to the roof platform to 
get a little solitude. 

"We had a town crier here by the name of Billy 
Clark from way back to the time of the Civil War until 
he died a few years ago. He was drafted as a young 
feller to go as a soldier, and for a while he was a fright- 
ened boy, but he was a little soft you know, and the 
officials saw he wasn't fit for the army. They gave him 
a furlough for ninety-nine years and twelve months. 
Lawyer Macy was his guardian. During the war Billy 
sold Boston Heralds. He was honest as the day was 
long and he was so anxious to pay for his papers that 
he kept sending on money to the publishers as fast as 
he got it. By and by they wrote to him that he had 
overpaid 'em. That didn't do no good, and they wrote 
to his guardian, who spoke to him, and said, 'Billy, 
don't send no more money.' 

" 'Mr. Macy,' Billy said, 'I wish you'd mind your 
own business. I'll send all the money I want to.' 

"He used to go through the streets crying out what- 
ever any one wanted to advertise. He had a good voice 
for that originally, but in his later years his voice all 
broke up so we couldn't hardly understand him. Every 
time his birthday came around somebody in town would 
make him a birthday cake. Oh, we certainly miss Billy. 
In the whaling days he spent a lot of time in the tower 
of the old church watching for returning vessels. He had 
good eyes. Yes, Iswanny! Billy could see farther than 
you and I put together. When he sighted a whaler 



204 Highways and Byways of New England 

comin' and made out what ship she was he'd blow a 
horn and come down and go to carry the news to the 
captain's house. He'd tell Nancy, the captain's wife — 
Nancy was a great name for women here — and she'd 
give him fifty cents or so. Then she'd go up through 
the scuttle in the roof to the lookout with her spy- 
glass." 

"But she wouldn't stay long," the landlady declared. 
"She'd soon come down and set to work to bake ginger- 
bread so as to have some nice and fresh for the boys on 
the ship and give 'em a treat. As soon as the vessel 
come in over the bar with her load of oil and — " 

"Delia, keep quiet a minute, will you," the landlord 
interrupted. "You and I can't talk to this gentleman 
at the same time, and I want to explain something. I 
want to tell about this whaling business. The ships 
used to be built and fitted out here for voyages that 
were expected to last 'bout four years. The wives who 
were left behind led a lonely life, and you can imagine 
they weren't very cheerful when their husbands' vessels 
left the harbor. 

"I remember, one night when I was nine years old, 
my mother came in the room where my brother and I 
were asleep and woke us up and told us she'd just got 
word from the owners of my father's vessel that the 
ship was lost and he was dead. I never saw him long 
enough hardly to know him. Often he wouldn't be at 
home more'n two months between voyages. The ship 
would start as soon as it could unload and get fitted 



Nantucket Days 205 

out. If a captain had good luck he'd retire by the time 
he was fifty worth fifteen or twenty thousand dollars. 
That was considered wealth in the old days. Of course, 
some voyages weren't profitable. There was one cap- 
tain come home with only five hundred barrels of oil 
after being gone fifty-two months. The owners lost 
forty thousand dollars on the voyage, and they sold 
the ship. She was a nice little bark, and the captain 
bought a quarter interest in her and started out again. 
He came back in thirty-four months just as the Civil 
War ended with over three thousand barrels of oil, 
and he got two dollars and twenty cents a gallon. His 
share of the profits was sixty-five thousand dollars." 

"Do you hear that bell ringing?" the landlady asked. 
"That's the curfew. It's a warning for everybody to 
get off the streets and that all lights should be put out 
and the people go to bed; but no one pays any atten- 
tion to it. We have a rising bell, too. That rings at 
seven in the morning, and there's a twelve o'clock bell 
at noon." 

"Two watchmen used to go on duty at the old church 
after the curfew rang," the landlord said. "It was a 
cold place up in the tower in winter, but they were 
rigged up with heavy boots and thick clothes, and only 
one man was in the tower at a time while the other was 
in a room below where there was a stove. They changed 
every hour. We thought a good deal of that tower 
watch. It served more for a fire alarm than anything 
else. If the watchmen saw a fire they'd go through the 



2o6 Highways and Byways of New England 

streets, by gorry! blowing horns and hollering to beat 
the band." 

The landlady had risen and taken a sprig of English 
Ivy from a vase on the table. She handed It to me with 
the remark: "Quite a little of that grows In our garden. 
It's descended from some that a neighbor on a whaling 
voyage brought from the tomb of Napoleon on St. 
Helena. We have a great many pretty flowers In our 
town gardens, and out on the moors are all kinds of 
wildflowers that you can think of. Lots of Scotch 
heather used to grow on the moorland, but people would 
go to get It and pull It up roots and all. Very little Is 
left now. Only two or three persons know where that 
little Is, and they won't tell." 

"My friend," the landlord said, "listen to me If you 
please for a moment. Flowers are all very well, but, 
by gracious! the moors are good for something else. 
Huckleberries, blackberries, and blueberries grow on 
'em. Us old-time Nantucketers would let them berries 
rot on the vines, but we've got a colony of Cape de Verde 
negroes here, and they go out In whole families after the 
berries and bring 'em to the town to sell. The children 
pick the same as the grown-ups. Why, heavens and 
earth! those kids are 'bout ten years old when they are 
born, and all ready to go right to work. The negroes are 
poor and live in little shacks of homes often, but they 
dress better'n the whites do. They spend everything 
they earn on clothes, and you'll see 'em wearin' patent 
leather shoes and pink stockings and yellow trousers. 



Nantucket Days 207 

"The island is very quiet at present. We don't get 
many summer people here until after the Fourth of 
July. You take these vacation visitors lookin' for a 
lodging-place — they don't want this and they don't 
want that. We have to deal with a good many blame 
cheap people, and it's something fierce the way they 
talk to you. Yes, sir, you put that in your pipe and 
smoke it. They come into our house and tell us how 
much they admire old-fashioned homes and furnishings, 
and they look at one thing and another and exclaim, 
'Oh, isn't this elegant! — lovely, lovely!' Lastly they 
say, 'Now let's see what kind of beds you've got;' and 
they'll punch their fists into 'em to see whether they've 
got the latest springs. If you was to show 'em a corded 
bed they'd drop dead. A person who's got health and 
works hard enough to be dog-tired can sleep on the 
floor, or out in the woods with his back against a tree, 
and sleep well, but the people who summer on this 
island must have spring beds, and they expect board at 
the same price as twenty years ago. Our own Massa- 
chusetts people put up the worst kick of any on God's 
earth. They are kickers from way back. They want 
everything old, and they also want all the modern 
improvements, and I don't know how in time you're 
goin' to manage that. 

"Delia, where's the almanac.^ I want to see how 
the tide is. Say, look here, my friend, I'm going over 
in my dory tomorrow to a shack I've got on the other 
side of the harbor. Why don't you come along with 



2o8 Highways and Byways of New England 

me? That's a good place to go In swimming. You 
can't drown there. The water's too darn shoal. At 
some of the bathing places there's bold water where 
you're likely to get out over your head before you know 
it, and there's such a surf it's dangerous for swimmers 
who are not expert. One mistake people make is stay- 
ing In too long. Some will be in that chilly water for 
half a day. You got to use a little horse sense 'bout 
that as well as other things. 

"There are no automobiles on the island. The public 
is against 'em. One man got one, but we wouldn't stand 
for it, and he had to get rid of It. I'm goin' to tell you 
just how we feel In this town. A great many of us have 
money invested in horses and carriages and do quite a 
business in hauling goods and going around with pleas- 
ure parties. The whole shooting match of such fellers 
is against anything that will interfere with their profits. 
Besides, our streets are very narrow. A man with an 
auto wants to go like time, and there'd surely be acci- 
dents. We'll have flying-machines here before we have 
automobiles." 

On the borders of the harbor was a row of fishermen's 
huts set on posts to safeguard them from the encroach- 
ing of the high tides, and there I one day stopped to 
chat with a man who greeted me from a hut door. I 
looked in and saw that the walls and ceiling were 
plentifully adorned with fishing implements. A ham- 
mock made out of an old net extended the full length of 
the room. Outside were shells and fish-heads, strewings 



Nantucket Days 209 

of seaweed, pieces of wrecks, boats battered and aban- 
doned, and others new and trim on the oozy flats that a 
receding tide had left bare. 

"It's the fishing industry more than anything else 
that supports Nantucket," the man said. "Just now 
quahauging is the great thing. The whole bottom in 
the harbor and for miles and miles outside is covered 
with quahaugs. In the spring I go over to the ditch 
that connects Long Pond with the ocean and ketch 
herring on their way up to the pond to spawn. Evening 
is the time for 'em, especially on stormy nights. The 
more storms the better. They stop after a few hours, 
and long 'bout 'leven o'clock the eels start to run out. 
We spear a good many eels In the holes on the ma'sh 
and in the cricks that make up around there. Some- 
times we ketch 'em almost as fast as we can jog. We 
fellers around here call it joggin'. They're all sizes 
from a shoestring up. The biggest one I ever got 
weighed nine pounds. I've seen twenty-five men out 
here on the harbor eeling in winter. We jog for the 
eels through holes cut In the Ice. There's more or 
less fishing, clamming, and one thing or another all 
winter. 

"Once In a while the harbor is frozen so you can go any- 
where on it, but the tide runs very strong here, and when 
it makes out it generally clears some places so the 
steamer that makes trips between Nantucket and the 
mainland can work her way In and out. There are 
times though when the field ice blows Into the harbor 



210 Highways and Byways of New England 

and the steamer may have to quit running for several 
days. I guess the longest time was three weeks. Then 
supplies of kerosene and butter and some other things 
may run short, but people know they are liable to be 
cut off, and they lay in a stock of what they need. It 
ain't so awful cold here. The ocean warms the air, 
and it's very seldom that the thermometer gets below 
zero," 

In my wanderings about the town I went up Joy 
Street and was interested to find that this cheerfully 
named thoroughfare led to the entrance to the cemetery. 
Some signs apprised me that it also led to the Poet's 
Corner, and when I came to a dooryard with its picket 
fence adorned with numerous rhymed placards I 
stopped to investigate. Similar signs were tacked to 
the house and to a little shop that had half a dozen 
nautical weathervanes on its peak. In the yard was a 
decripit "one-hoss shay" and other antique vehicles 
and curiosities, some genuine and some fake, and two 
rooms In the house served as a sort of museum and 
salesplace for souvenirs, peanuts, and root beer. The 
signs were printed with a rubber type outfit and in- 
cluded not only poetry but jokes, sells, and conun- 
drums. They were such as these: 

Now, my friends, listen to me. 
There's no use now in talking 
This is the place for you to see 
When you go out a walking. 




A cobble-paved lane 



Nantucket Days 211 

B GOOD LIKE I 
AND NEVER LIE 

Receipt for Coot Stew 

Skin the coot, throw away all but the skin, nail skin 
to a board, let stay nailed 48 hours, then eat the board. 

God made the world and rested, 
God made man and rested, 
Then God made woman. 
And since then neither 
God nor man has rested. 

What is it.? 
Luke had it before, 
Paul had it behind, 
All girls have it once, 
Boys cannot have it. 

Old Mrs. Mulligan had it twice in succession. 
Dr. Lowell had it before and after and had 
it twice as bad behind as before. 

Answer: the letter L. 

The poet had died not long previous after living all 
alone in the house for nineteen years. A picture of him 
on a souvenir postcard showed a burly man with side- 
whiskers, an enormous broadbrimmed hat, and a sign 
hung on his vest informing you that "This is me." He 
looked like a pirate. 



212 Highways and Byways of New England 

From a pamphlet autobiography written the year he 
died I learned that he was born at Nantucket in 1833 
and left school when he was fourteen. During the next 
forty-four years, most of which time he was off the 
island, he changed his employment fifty-one times. 
Among other things he worked on farms, tried black- 
smithing, was a night policeman in Providence, drove 
a New York City omnibus on Broadway, had a washing- 
fluid store in Boston, was a clerk In a lawyer's office, 
and peddled through the rustic regions with a tin-cart. 
In most of the larger places where he sojourned, he 
joined the fire department. He had the dropsy, the 
smallpox, and yellow fever. His experiences included 
service in the army through most of the Civil War, and 
twice he was captured by the "Rebs" while doing duty 
as a spy. When he at last returned to Nantucket to 
make it his permanent home he set about earning a 
living by going around from house to house with a 
basket selling peanuts at five cents a bag. He prospered 
and presently "opened up Poet's Corner for the enter- 
tainment of summer visitors." His poetic efforts seem 
to have been limited to manufacturing supposedly 
humorous jingles of a few lines each. In one of the 
final sentences of his reminiscences he says, "I am now 
seventy-eight years old, and I have never drank a drop 
of tea or coffee, and I have never uttered an oath." 

Not far from the home of the poet, on one of the 
sandhills back of the town whence you can overlook 
the moors sweeping away across the island with their 



Nantucket Days 213 

lowly shrubs and coarse grasses and stunted trees, is an 
old windmill. It was built in 1746 and was used till 
1892. Now it is taken care of as a relic of the past, and 
a keeper is there in summer to tell its story and explain 
to visitors its rude mechanism. I had been informed 
that visitors as they gazed at its weather-beaten 
shingled sides were apt to utter some such exclamation 
as: "Why, those shingle must have been on there over 
a hundred years! I'd give a dollar if I could carry away 
one of 'em as a souvenir." 

"Well," the keeper would say, "I guess you can have 
one if you want to pay a dollar for it." 

So the visitor would go off with the shingle, but it 
probably hadn't been on for six months. The keeper 
had got some shingles from an old house that was being 
torn down and used them to replace those he sold. 

When I called at the mill I found the caretaker seated 
just inside of the door smoking his pipe. He was a 
stoutish vigorous man, who though no longer young 
had a face which retained something of Its youthful 
smoothness and hair that had not yet lost its original 
color. He wanted me to guess his age, and when I 
suggested sixty-five he responded: "Well, sir, I'm 
eighty, and I feel now as if I'd live to be one hundred 
and eighty. The other day a man and his wife was 
here to see the mill. She was quite a talker, and she 
remarked that she hoped I'd live to be as old as her 
husband. He was grayer'n a rat, and I said, 'By the 
way, how old is he.^' 



214 Highways and Byways of New England 

" 'He's sixty,' she answered. 

"People wouldn't die so young if they lived mo' 
plainer and didn't eat such rich food. They didn't 
have all these fancy foods and drinks in the olden-time. 
We got one grave down here in the cemetery of a woman 
who was one hundred and twelve years of age. Cap'n 
Grant who kept the mill before me was ninety-three 
when he died, and he was just as straight as any timber 
in the mill. But Nantucket's about as healthy a place 
as there is in the Union anyway. We can't help getting 
pure air, for we're twenty-four miles from the nearest 
mainland. It's like being on a ship anchored in the 
ocean. 

"I've seen people come here just like a rail — just 
like a clothespin — and go away fat as pigs. I know 
one woman who couldn't eat or sleep at home and 
her doctor decided she had consumption. 'The only 
thing I can do,' he said, 'is to recommend you to go to 
some seaport place in the hope that it will prolong your 
life for a few months.' 

"So she came to Nantucket. At that time she 
weighed ninety pounds, but she began to brace up and 
to eat and sleep and at the end of the season she 
weighed one hundred and twenty-three. Since then 
she's been here every summer. She calls Nantucket 
her second birthplace. Consumption wasn't what was 
the matter with her. It was general debility. 

"I'll give you another instance. An old lady relation 
of mine come to Nantucket visiting. She weighed one 



Nantucket Days 215 

hundred and eighty-four pounds, but after she'd been 
here three weeks her weight had gone up to over two 
hundred, and she said, 'Let me get off this island 
devilish quick!' 

"There used to be more children in the homes here 
than you find now. They numbered fourteen in our 
family, and they all lived to grow up and marry. Look 
here, I've seen twenty-four of us, husband and wives, 
set down at once in our house with Father and Mother. 

"This old mill is about as good as it ever was, except 
that the long beam which slants down from the cap to 
the ground, and which was for shifting the sails to face 
the wind, is now rotten and has to stay exactly where it 
is. One morning last summer, as I was comin' up here 
I saw that the wind was just in the right corner to set 
the machinery going, and it was getting stronger. 
'Good Lord, let her breeze!' I said. 

"Well, I'll tell you what I done. I got a bushel of 
shelled corn and brought it to the mill. Then I put the 
sails on two of the arms. If I'd put 'em on all four the 
arms would have run away from me. I ground the 
corn in no time and afterward separated the wheels 
and let the sails keep whirling. The townspeople saw 
the vanes going and they said it looked like old times. 
That was a great day for the mill — you bet it was! 
There was crowds of visitors here all the time. 

"When I was a boy my folks bought corn of the 
farmers and I lugged up to the mill many a bag on my 
back. Mother made corn cakes. I golly! I've eaten 



2i6 Highways and Byways of New England 

lots of 'em, and they tasted good too — oh, fust rate. 
Also she made johnnycake and what old-fashioned peo- 
ple call Injun dumplings. The dumplings was pieces of 
meal dough flattened out and cooked on top of a stew. 

"You notice the mill has two doors. That's because 
the sails are sometimes whirling right across one door 
so It can't be used. The tips of the arms come almost 
down to the ground. If one was to hit you good you'd 
never know what hurt you. 

"There was four of these mills up here back of the 
town once. Lots mo' land was cultivated on the Island 
then, and the farmers raised plenty of corn and rye 
and wheat so that the mills had all they could do in 
winter. The farmers grew big crops and they had 
thousands of sheep grazing on the moors. But the 
generation now is too darned lazy to go into farming, 
and the farms are all goin' to ruin. There ain't enough 
raised on most of 'em to feed a cat. 

"At the time this mill was built Nantucket was a 
stronghold of the Quakers. They had their meeting- 
houses and schools, and in 1800 more than half the 
inhabitants were of that faith. Once when I was a boy 
I went to one of their meetings. Nobody said anything 
and I just sat there and twiddled my thumbs. Human 
nature couldn't stand the severity of their customs. 
They had no use for art, music or games, or for books 
of fiction, and when the society began to disown 
members for breaking its rules its decline was rapid. 
None of the Friends are left here now. 



Nantucket Days 217 

"One of the best men that ever Hved on the island 
was Edward W. Perry. He owned a coalyard down on 
one of the wharves and never fenced It in. Every 
winter when he was buyin' coal he got forty ton extra 
for the poor to lug away. Once Cap'n Reno called at 
Edward W. Perry's office and told him he'd seen seven- 
teen men comin' from his coalyard, each with a full 
bag over his shoulder. He thought the owner would 
want to put a stop to such wholesale stealln', but 
Edward W. Perry said, 'Cap'n Reno, if you hadn't gone 
to the post office after your mail you wouldn't have seen 
em. 

"He was rich. He didn't care. Why, he'd even 
have some coal dumped up on the edge of the town 
when he thought the weather was too cold for the boys 
to come down on the wharf. Well, I tell you that 
Edward W. Perry was a man! 

"I never saw any coal burned when I was young 
growin' up. We used wood and peat. People would go 
out in the swamps and dig the heavy black peat mud, 
and after it dried many and many a load was hauled to 
town to sell to the old rich fellers. It took plenty of 
fuel to heat our houses with their big fireplaces. Once 
the island was covered with large oaks, and roots used 
to be often found in the peat bogs as big as a man's 
body. 

"In the summer of 1846 when I was twelve years old 
we had the big fire that burned out three hundred and 
sixty-three buildings in this town. The fire was dis- 



2l8 Highways and Byways of New England 

covered at five minutes to eleven oy two men who were 
comin' down Main Street from courtin'. They smelt 
somethin' like cloth burnin', and they put their noses 
to the keyholes of the stores along and finally come to 
where the fire was in a hat and cap store. There'd 
been no rain for three weeks, and the town buildings 
was like powder. It took all the wharves and walked 
up Main Street and made a big hole in the place. I 
didn't go to it but kept runnin' out of the house to look 
and then runnin' in. Father was in his schooner sword- 
fishing thirty miles away, but he saw the light and said: 
'That fire sprung from my house, I've got so many 
children. They must have been playing with matches 
or somethin'. He started for home right off. 

"In those times several watchmen were on duty in 
the town every night, and I can remember waking up 
and hearing one of 'em goin' through our street and 
calling out, 'Twelve o'clock and all is well.' It was a 
part of their job to keep us boys quiet. If they found 
us stealin' grapes or into other mischief they'd get after 
us. I've had 'em chase me more'n once. They carried 
a hook. It had a wooden handle three feet long, and 
the hook was just right to ketch us round the neck or 
to slip round a feller's leg and trip him up. We called 
the watchmen hookers. Often we'd holler out to 'em, 
'Hookaar! hookaar! ketch us If you can!' 

"If we did get caught the watchman would take the 
wooden end of his hook, slap our setdowns, then give 
us a kick and say, 'Get out ! ' Ah, those good old times ! " 




t^ 



Nantucket Days 219 

The chief pleasure resort and watering place of the 
island is Sconset on the exposed Atlantic shore. You 
can go thither from the old harbor town hy a queer 
little narrow gauge railroad. The distance is eight miles 
over the sober rolling moorland. When you reach 
Sconset you find great billowing sand dunes, and 
wooden hotels and summer cottages, and a cluster of 
humble one-story homes of islanders that are mildly 
picturesque in their irregular architecture and embower- 
ing of flowers and vines. A steep sandy beach fronts 
the gray hazy waste of the sea with its restless waves, 
its smoke-plumed steamers, and white-winged sailing 
vessels. 

I visited a fish-house on the edge of the terrace that 
the village occupied. A man inside was cleaning fish, 
and another man was poking over the contents of a 
bucket of waste and extracting some heads and meaty 
skeletons. When the latter had his hands full he came 
out and started to descend a steep narrow stairway 
that led down the bank to where, on a lower level amid 
the sand, was a scattered settlement of shacks and 
small cottages. "I'm a-comin', God bless you," he 
called out, and I ventured to ask him who he was 
talking to. 

"A friend of miue lives in that yellow house down 
there," he replied, "and I've got a lot of baby chickens 
under his piazza. I'm carryin' 'em somethin' to eat 
and it was them that I was speakin' to." 

He returned after a while and paused to get his 



220 Highways and Byways of New England 

breath at the head of the stairway. "That's a good 
place for my chickens this time of year, eh?" he said. 
"In winter I have 'em with me at my home in Nan- 
tucket. This is no place for chickens or people either 
in our winter storms. When you get a nor'wester here 
then, by gol! you know it, and there's only about a 
dozen families stay the year round. How the dickens 
they keep from freezing I don't know. You see that 
small house just beyond my friend's. A poet lives in 
that. I don't believe he's very prosperous. Two-thirds 
of the poets starve to death anyhow. They don't need 
much to eat either. A person who don't do nothin' 
don't have no appetite to eat nothin.' 

"Seems to me I hear it thunder off in the distance, 
and I see the sky is gettin' overcast and the wind is 
blowin' up strong." 

He had hardly made this remark when a fleshy 
elderly woman appeared on the scene. She was his 
wife. "There's goin' to be a tempest," she declared, 
and she insisted that he should come home. 

"Holy smoke! what for should I go home?" he said. 
"Do you want to sit in my lap and have me rock you? 
That storm ain't comin' here. Lord, no! We won't 
get enough rain to wet my shirt." 

But he went, and I accompanied him to his little 
low-roomed shell of a house near by. We reached 
shelter just in time to escape a spatter of rain. 

"They're gettin' a good storm somewheres away from 
here," my host said. "Like enough it's a-pourin' on 



Nantucket Days 221 

the other side of the island. Here comes my cat. We 
have to treat our cats pretty well or they go off and 
stay In the swamps. They ketch moles and birds and 
little rabbits, and they raise up young ones there. 
Rabbits are very plenty in the swamps and scrub oaks, 
and they're good eating in winter. They find plenty of 
stuff to live on and are as fat as butter then. 

"I've got a sore thumb, and I'm keepin' it tied up 
at present. Yesterday morning at three o'clock just 
as day was breaking I started out bluefishing in my 
dory. Well, sir, I got one more fish than I wanted. I 
had him in my hands when a big sturgeon jumped out 
of the water close by the boat. The sturgeons get as 
lousy as a cuckoo, and they come up that way to shake 
themselves. This one fell back with a splash that sent 
the water flying all around and pretty near drowned me. 
At the same time the bluefish bit my thumb. There 
ain't a man in the world can sharpen a saw as sharp as 
the teeth of a bluefish. Each tooth is just like a lance, 
and my thumb was bitten clear to the bone. I've seen a 
feller lose half his heel that way. I caught six after I 
got bit, and then my thumb was paining me so that I 
said to myself, 'I guess you'd better go ashore, you old 
fool;' and I went. 

"That man at the fish-house is a Portugee. Me'n' 
him used to go pardners fishing. One July day when 
we was five mile off shore in our dory there come up a 
sudden storm. It thundered and rained and the wind 
raised a heavy swell. When we was down in the 



222 Highways and Byways of New England 

trough of the waves we could only see the heavens 
above, and when we were on the crest we could see all 
of Nantucket Island. I said to my pardner: 'Old boy, 
we've got caught. We'll have to bid farewell to Nan- 
tucket unless we have a streak of good luck.' 

"The waves would have turned our boat over like 
a shingle in no time if we hadn't had two hundred and 
some odd bluefish in it. They served as ballast, and 
they were the only thing that saved us. 

"When I was thirteen, at the time of the Civil War, 
I ran away to join the navy. I was a powder monkey, 
and it was my job to lug bags of powder up from the 
magazine to the guns. After the war I went on voyages 
and knocked around all over the world. But at last I 
come back to Nantucket. I landed with just a dollar 
in my pocket, and an old feller with a hack took me 
up to my mother's home. I gave him fifty cents, and 
went and bought a pint of rum with the money I had 
left. Oh, I used to be hail fellow well met! The tougher 
the crowd I got Into the better I liked it, and now I'm 
no good. 

"I come back here broke. I'd seen men lookin' for 
work and prayin' to God not to find It. I'd seen men 
loafin' and lettln' their wives support 'em at the wash- 
tub. They wasn't fit to be classed as men. They 
ought to have been strung up or put on a desert Island, 
I'd seen men makin' believe they was drunk so a cop 
would collar 'em, and when they was sentenced to three 
months at the state farm they was happy as a dog with 



Nantucket Days 223 

two tails, because 'twas a good place to spend the winter. 
I've no love or respect for that class of people. What 
I did was to fish and peddle what I caught on a wheel- 
barrow around town. 

"Time went along, and for better or worse I married. 
I knew things couldn't be any worse. The woman was 
a widow with two children, and people said I was a 
blame fool to marry her. I'd have been a blame fool 
If I hadn't married her. She's a pretty good old gal, 
and now, thank God! I've got a home. If it wasn't 
for her I'd be in Davy Jones' locker. 

"She's a good cook, and we have the best there is 
on our table as far as sea food is concerned. I'm 
tellin' you there's as much difference between fresh 
fish and those you get inland as between cheese and 
chalk. I bring in a fish I've caught that's hardly dead 
yet. 'Here you are. Ma,' I say; and she washes him 
up, rolls him in meal, and in a few minutes he's in the 
frypan. You can eat such a fish with a relish. But 
the sweetness is all gone out of cold storage fish. It 
ain't worth a cuss. 

"For several summers we boarded some concreters 
at our house, and they bargained we should feed 'em 
on fish. No meat for them. So they had fish cooked in 
all kinds of ways, and we'd make fishballs, and we'd 
put cold fish in their dinner pails. I told 'em that when 
they got home they'd have fishbones comin' out behind 
their ears. I'd get clams for 'em, and a peck wouldn't 
be a flea bite to them fellers. 'Don't eat the shells,' 



224 Highways and Byways of New England 

I'd say. 'I want to feed those to my hens.' They 
wanted somethin' good and plenty of it. They didn't 
want to be served the way they would be at some hotels 
with a little mess of this and a little mess of that — 
forty-nine different messes, and hardly enough in any 
one for you to get used to the taste of it." 

About this time my host's wife came In and asked 
him for the key to the shop. He explained to her that 
he had gone into the shop not long before and left his 
bunch of keys on a bench, and when he came out he 
had shut the door, which had a spring lock on it, and 
he hadn't made up his mind how he was going to get 
It open. 

She went out, and a few minutes later we followed 
and found she had pried back the lock with a kitchen 
knife. He patted her affectionately and remarked, 
"The next time you go to town, if you'll promise to be 
a good gal and not overload your stomach I'll give you 
five cents." 

Note. — To go to Nantucket you can start on the short sea voy- 
age at either New Bedford or Woods Hole. The boats stop at 
Martha's Vineyard, which has attractions of its own that might 
well lure the traveller to pause there and make its acquaintance. 
But Nantucket itself excels all other New England islands and 
coast resorts in the charm of its unspoiled quaintness, and a first 
visit to it is sure to be a delightful experience. 



XII 



ALONG SHORE IN RHODE ISLAND 

NO more fascinating character is to be found 
among the savages of our early New England 
history than King Philip, at whose hands the 
colonists suffered so much; and when I thought of 
visiting Rhode Island I decided that what I most 
wanted to see was Mount Hope, where, long years ago, 
this famous Indian chief had dwelt and where he met 
his tragic death. I expected as soon as I got into the 
vicinity of the mountain to see it rising against the sky 
in at least moderately imposing proportions; but one 
is obliged to have a quite favorable position to see it at 
all. In fact it is nothing but a hill, and not much of a 
hill at that, and I wandered astray again and again on 
the local roadways as I searched for it one autumn 
morning. 

The region between it and Bristol, the nearest town, 
two miles distant, is for the most part one of park-like 
fields that have fine trees along the borders, and sturdy 
stone-wall fences. This used to be farming country, 
but the better farms have been taken by city people 
who want a place for rural retirement in the summer, 
and the little farms have fallen into the hands of immi- 
grants from Portugal. I sometimes saw men digging 



226 Highways and Byways of New England 

potatoes or cutting corn, but the cultivated fields were 
few, and agriculture as a means of livelihood is almost 
a thing of the past. 

At length the pleasant, pastoral country was left 
behind and I came to bleak unfenced uplands whence I 
could look off on the sea overhung by a pearly haze and 
with a dazzling pathway across its surface sunward. 
Here I happened on two little boys watching some 
grazing cows. They were sitting among the bushes and 
ripened October grasses and weeds in a slight hollow, 
where the sun shone warm and they were somewhat 
sheltered from the brisk, cool wind that was blowing. 
The cows needed only occasional attention, and the 
hours of their vigil that chilly day must have dragged 
slowly. I tried to talk with them, but with slight 
success, for they were shy little Portuguese whose 
knowledge of English was very slender. 

Mount Hope was now close at hand and I soon reached 
its bare, rounded summit. The land was thinly- 
grassed pasturage, and the turf was variegated with 
stunted goldenrod and white and purple asters, and 
there were multitudes of branching thistles, some of 
them still in blossom, but most gone to seed and dry- 
stalked. In spots grew clumps of huckleberry bushes 
and gay-leaved patches of little sumacs and poison ivy, 
while now and then occurred gray outcroppings of 
rock and neglected lines of stone-wall that the frosts 
had heaved into chaotic ruin. 

The hill owes its name to the Indians who called it 







^ 



g 



Along Shore In Rhode Island 227 

Monthaup, a title easily Anglicized to Mount Hope. It 
Is the highest lift of land in all the rather level country 
around as far as the eye can reach, and it occupies a 
commanding position at the end of a peninsula hemmed 
about by Irregular Inlets from the sea. The steep 
southern side fronting toward one of the broader water- 
ways Is broken by a rude crag of llchened quartz, and 
on the slope below the crag King Philip's home village 
had stood. The place was sheltered from the rough 
northwest winds, and there was a cool spring of water 
at the foot of the cliff. Moreover, close by the spring 
Is a niche in the rock known as "King Philip's Seat." 
Possibly he used to sit there and meditate while he 
gazed off over the inlet to the wooded slopes of the 
shore beyond. Certainly the niche is in form very well 
suited to Its traditional use, and It would be much more 
perfect If visitors did not have the habit of chipping off 
pieces to carry away for mementoes. The spot is 
naturally very attractive, but unfortunately it is a 
picnic resort that has failed, and scattered roundabout 
are all sorts of ramshackle buildings — big and little, 
broken-windowed, leaky-roofed, and dubious in general. 
For a long time the savage dwellers of the region were 
friendly with the whites, and Philip's father, Massasolt, 
not only ceded them land when they wanted It, but 
fed them when they were starving. Philip, as he grew 
older, perceived the increasing power of the English 
with alarm. They were overrunning the whole country, 
and the domain of the Indians was constantly contract- 



228 Highways and Byways of New England 

ing. So at length he determined to act, and he jour- 
neyed from tribe to tribe inciting them to unite to drive 
the white men back whence they came. The struggle 
began in 1675, ^^^ many an exposed English village 
was wiped out, and hundreds of the settlers' lives were 
sacrificed. 

But the savages suffered far more than their foes, 
and one by one the confederate tribes abandoned 
Philip to his fate. His brother and most trusted fol- 
lowers fell in battle, and when at length his wife and 
only son were taken prisoners, he exclaimed: "My 
heart breaks! Now I am ready to die." 

The child was a boy of nine, and the Puritans, who 
had owed so much to his grandfather, sold him as a 
slave to Bermuda. King Philip was forced to seek 
refuge in the deepest recesses of the forest, yet even in 
these dire straits he put to death one of his adherents 
who presumed to speak of making peace. 

After a time he wandered back with a few followers 
to Mount Hope and encamped to the northwestward of 
the mount on a knoll in a swamp. Captain Church, the 
leader of the forces fighting Philip, learned of his foe's 
place of retreat through an Indian deserter, and at 
once started with a well-armed company to prevent 
the chief's escape and end the war. The English com- 
mander ordered his men to approach Philip's camp by 
night from the more accessible side as silently as possi- 
ble, and when within a few rods to lie in wait till day- 
light. Meanwhile he posted a squad in ambush on the 



Along Shore in Rhode Island 229 

other side. Morning came, and one of Philip's Indians 
caught a glimpse of their lurking enemies. At once he 
and his companions made a rush to escape. Philip, 
however, ran straight on two of the party in ambush — a 
white man and an Indian, who both attempted to shoot 
him. The Englishman's gun missed fire, but a bullet from 
his companion's musket penetrated the heart of Philip, 
and the warrior fell forward on his face with his gun 
under him in the "miery swamp." 

Our pious ancestors were wont to call Philip "a 
damnable wretch; a hellish monster; a bloody villain;" 
etc., but later estimates see in him a patriot rising in 
righteous indignation to avenge his people for their 
wrongs, and to protect them from the steadily increasing 
encroachments of the whites. Devastation marked the 
path of his warfare; but he committed no act of In- 
humanity so dreadful as that of the whites when they 
burned the old men and the women and children in the 
wigwams of the Narragansett village that they success- 
fully surprised, and his treatment of his English cap- 
tives was decidedly more generous than that accorded 
to the Indians. For downright brutality the Christian 
English rarely allowed the heathen savages to outrival 
them. 

Tradition has Identified quite definitely the spot In 
the swamp where Philip fell, and I sought It out, push- 
ing along through the delicate sprays of the green under- 
wood and picking my way amid pools and mud bright- 
ened as if with bits of flame by the gold and scarlet of 



230 Highways and Byways of New England 

early-fallen autumn leaves. The sunshine flickered 
down into the still depths, and when I looked up I 
caught glimpses of blue sky and drifting clouds; and 
I heard the breeze rising and falling, now a soft whisper 
amid the foliage, now a mellow roaring that thrashed 
the upper leafage into a wild tumult. Probably the 
present appearance of the swamp is much the same as 
it was when the brave chief met his fate; and to recall 
the incidents of that grim tragedy on the very ground 
where it occurred is an impressive experience. 

At length I returned to Bristol, an old seaport, which, 
though it has grown and changed, still retains hints of 
a romantic past. Particularly interesting are the 
ancient resident streets near the waterside with the 
thickset homes snug to the sidewalk and not infre- 
quently encroaching on it with their quaint little porches 
and steps. Then, too, there is in the heart of the town 
a broad common with graceful elms lining every border 
and all the criscrossing paths. Its shadowy green- 
turfed repose was very delightful, and here I made the 
acquaintance of two elderly villagers who were having 
a companionable chat on one of the benches under the 
trees. The more venerable of the two lived in a tiny 
cottage near by, and when he rose to go home he in- 
vited me to accompany him. I was glad of the chance 
to visit with him further, and we walked along together 
to his dwelling. He took me around to the back door 
from which a narrow path of irregular-edged flagging 
led to some latticed grape-arbors hung full of fruit; 




a ^ 



Along Shore in Rhode Island 231 

and beyond the arbors was a little garden. The old 
man delivered to his wife the basket he carried with its 
various packages from the grocery, and the three of us 
sat down in the kitchen and talked about the town as 
it used to be. 

"I'm over eighty," the man said, "and I c'n remem- 
ber when Bristol was an important port. A great many 
well-to-do sea captains lived here who bought their 
own freight and went where they was a-min' to to sell 
it. They tended to all the business themselves. Six- 
teen whaleships was owned in the place and about the 
same number of merchant ships and a lot of brigs. Our 
wharves extended along shore a mile, and I've seen 'em 
all loaded, and a square-rigger lying at every wharf. 
There was ships from all over the world; and when 
one of them old square-riggers come in or went out 
with every sail set and flags flyin' it was somethin' 
worth lookin' at. 

"Those was days when business was lively here in 
Bristol, and Water Street was full of people and teams 
all the time. On the ships hundreds of men was at 
work h'istin' out the oil and hemp and iron, and the 
sugar, coffee, and molasses and all those sort of things. 
On shore there was lots of coopers makin' casks for the 
whalemen, and blacksmiths' shops makin' harpoons 
and chains, and there was shoemakers makin' shoes 
for the sailors who was goin' on voyages to be away 
perhaps two or three years, and there were tailors' 
shops makin' clothing for 'em; and we had a big ship- 



232 Highways and Byways of New England 

yard here, and sail lofts makin' sails, and several rope 
walks, some on 'em five or six hundred feet long. How 
the ways of workin' have changed! Why, with the 
machinery that's been invented, more rope can be made 
now in a building fifty feet square in one day than an 
old-fashioned rope walk could make in a month. It's 
the same way with other things. If you're goln' to 
have a new house these days the heft of It Is got out by 
machinery; and in fact steam and electricity have a 
big share in about all the jobs that's done. But even 
if we did used to do everything by hand, nobody didn't 
realize they was workin' so awful hard. 

"There was no railroads here, and in winter when the 
ice kept ships from reaching Providence they came to 
our wharves, and all the farmers around would turn 
out with their oxsleds to carry the freight by land the 
rest of the way. They'd get loaded up — a string on 'em 
the length of two squares — and all start off together 
about midnight, and get back the next night, each with 
a load to go on the vessels. 

"When I was young we shipped great quantities of 
onions from this region. Acres and acres was grown 
here, and lots o' people didn't do anything else but 
raise that one crop. We'd bunch 'em by braiding the 
tops with four strands of rye straw. The bunches 
would have the big onions at the bottom and gradually 
taper off to little ones. About twenty bunches made a 
bushel. I've sot on a stool many a time half the night 
bunchin' onions, and three or four men helpin' me, 



Along Shore In Rhode Island 233 

when I was in a hurry to get 'em off. You could pick 'em 
up and braid 'em into bunches with that air rye straw 
almost as fast as a hen can pick up corn. We'd load a 
thousand bunches on a cart to wunst and carry to the 
ships, and they was handled careful, I tell you. They 
went to Cuba and Tangier and Porto Rique and all 
around, and they usually brought big prices. Some 
farms wouldn't get through bunching and selling till 
March, and then it was most time to begin work on the 
next crop. 

"One of the first things I c'n remember is the gineral 
muster we used to have every fall on the common. It 
was an all-day celebration for trainin' and exercisin' 
the militia; but the musters was gin up while I was a 
little boy. Where the band-stand now is there was a 
liberty pole, and we'd h'Ist a flag on it muster days and 
Fourth of July. The flag was all white except for a 
gray eagle and several stars. 

"The common then didn't have all these ellums on 
It, but just a few large buttonwoods, and along the 
street walks we had cherry trees. We didn't grow much 
fruit on our own land, for we wanted to raise the useful 
and substantial things. Fruit ain't nawthin' — it tastes 
kind o' nice, but 'taint like a good hill of potatoes. If 
a man wanted to set out a fruit tree he'd start an apple 
tree. You get a barrel of apples In your cellar and you 
can make apple pies and apple slump (apples cooked 
in a deep dish with a thick crust on top). But what's 
the good of these 'ere pears and such fruits ? Very few 



234 Highways and Byways of New England 

of 'em was raised, and very few grapes. If we wanted 
grapes we'd go off In the swamps to the east'ard and 
pick 'em where they grew wild, and we'd get wild pears 
on the hills." 

"We might just as well depend on the hills and 
pastures now for our fruit," the old lady said, looking 
out of the window toward the garden. "The torment- 
ing young ones around here come right onto our prem- 
ises and pick the fruit before it is ripe and tear every- 
thing all to pieces." 

"They wa'n't like that when I was young," the old 
man declared. "They was brought up to behave 
themselves." 

"They ain't brought up at all now," his wife said. 
"They grow up wild. We had almost none of their 
advantages, but the more advantages children have 
the worse they seem to be. Oh, they act like the old 
scratch!" 

"Yes, things have changed," the man commented. 
"Even the weather is different. You know when we 
have a ten or twelve Inch snowfall people will say, 
*Why, that is an old-fashioned storm!' Tain't nawthin' 
of the sort. We don't get any such big snows as they 
used to have. I've seen the snow cover our fences and 
stone walls so you could walk right over 'em, and all 
on a level, too. Why, gracious sake alive! we had to 
shovel out the roads, and we'd make such channels and 
have the snow so high on either side that a common- 
sized boy couldn't look out over it. Now the snows 



Along Shore In Rhode Island 235 

are never so deep but that with a little plough hitched 
side of a two-horse sled they can break out the roads 
and go about their business. Mother, don't you recol- 
lect how we used to have to shovel out our roads?" 

"Yes, every winter," she replied; "and until you'd 
finished shoveling, the milkcarts couldn't get to town." 

"To show you what our storms was like," the old 
man remarked, "I want to tell you about a young 
couple that lived on the outskirts of the village. They 
woke up one time after havin' what they thought had 
been their usual night's rest; but the room was still 
dark as a pocket, and so they went to sleep again. 
When they woke up the second time there was no more 
sign of daylight than before, and the man says, ' 'Pears 
to me this is the longest night that ever I see.' 

" 'Well, I think so, too,' she says. 

"'I'm goin' to get up,' says he; and they both got 
up and went to the kitchen on the other side of the house 
and found the sun shining in from the west. It was 
way along in the afternoon, and there had been a 
snowstorm the previous night that had left a drift 
completely covering their bedroom window. 

"How would people now stand those winters.'' Folks 
ain't so well and rugged as they used to be. You take 
the women — there ain't half of 'em these days able to 
do their own housework. But, Lord-a-mercy! in old 
times they'd do all there was to do indoors, and a lot 
besides in the fields. They'd go out and hay It, and 
drop corn and husk, and they'd hoe and do other work 



236 Highways and Byways of New England 

in the onions. We're more helpless in a good many 
ways. For instance, it used to be the habit, if you 
wanted to trade at a store, to buy what you wanted 
and pay for it and carry it home. Now, you most 
likely get the things charged and have 'em sent home, 
no matter how little you buy; and in one way or an- 
other you've got to pay for the time of the man that 
does the delivering, and for the horse and wagon and 
the horse feed and stabling, and for paper bags, boxes, 
and all that. 

"But there are ways, too, in which we have im- 
proved. Take the matter of lights — when I was a boy 
karosene wa'n't known, and we had whale-oil lamps 
that gave about the same light as a candle. They 
had two little tubes with wicks in 'em that run down 
into the oil, but there was no chimbleys. 

"Stoves are another improvement. When I was a 
boy we had fireplaces, and, sir! if the thermometer was 
ten below zero, and the wind blowin' a gale it was hard 
to keep warm. Sometimes we'd hang a bedquilt on 
the backs of chairs in front of the fire and set inside of 
that. Right around the hearth it would usually be 
good and hot, but a little farther back the water in a 
pitcher on the table might be freezin'; and mornings 
you'd very likely wake up to find a snowbank on your 
bed, if you slept upstairs. However, we got along 
somehow, and kept middlin' well and hearty, and when 
you went outdoors the cold didn't take hold of you as 
it does now. Yes, as old Squire Bullock told his son 



Along Shore In Rhode Island 237 

when they were putting in a stove and doing away with 
a fireplace, * 'Tain't healthy, but it's more comfortable.' 

"People don't cook such things as they used to. 
Mother would hang the pots on the crane and put in 
beef, pork and cabbage and other vegetables, and you'd 
have a dinner that would do you some good, and that 
would stand by you so you could go out and swing an 
ax or a seldge-hammer. But now there are hundreds 
of persons who can't eat a piece of pork; or of beef, 
either, if it's got any fat on it." 

"Father is old-fashioned," his wife said. "If he 
wa'n't, mebbe he'd think different." 

"Those same folks that can't eat pork will eat any 
quantity of sweet things to sweeten 'em up," the old 
man continued. "But what's the good of cake and 
pic^" They ain't nawthin' only windgalls. And this 
'ere sugar stuff all colored up, and the chocolate candies 
— we didn't have no such stuff when I was a boy. The 
candy business is a big thing now. So is the ice cream 
business. We never had any ice cream, and people 
didn't even store ice for other uses; but now every one 
has to have a refrigerator and they'll buy a ten cent 
lump of ice to keep a cent's worth of milk on. 

"Did you ever notice what a lot of boys smoke 
cigarets these days.^ We didn't have cigarets at all in 
my time; but once when I was quite young a whale- 
ship come in — it was th6 ship Bozvditch^ — and some of us 
boys thought we'd go aboard. So we rowed out, and 
when we was on deck lookin' around we noticed a barrel 



238 Highways and Byways of New England 

chuck brlmmln' full o' cigars. The sailors had made 
'em themselves out of wild tobacco they'd got some- 
where in their voyage round Cape Horn. They smoked 
'em when they wanted to, and they told us to help 
ourselves. Well, we took three or four apiece and 
smoked 'em, and when I got home I was taken sick, 
and didn't I heave up Jonah! Yes, I did heave up 
Jonah terribly. I laid right down on the floor and let 
fly — By Jerusalem! Then, when I was all through and 
cleaned up, I got the pitapats — my mother give me 
them. She took her slipper and says, 'Now, if you've 
got over the smokin' you been a-doin', I'll smoke you!' 
And she did, I George, sir! 

"Well, in recallin' what times was long ago I often 
think I'd like to go back there for some things; and 
whether we're really much better off as a whole I don't 
know. We got enough to eat in them days, and we 
have enough to eat now. We had to work then, and 
we have to work now. Seems as if it amounted to pretty 
much the same thing." 

Evening was approaching, and the room was getting 
dusky when I left the little cottage where I had been 
so agreeably entertained. I went out into the town; 
but it was not quite the same place it had been before, 
for the reminiscences to which I had listened lent it a 
new interest, and every scene in the older part called 
up visions of the past. 

Before taking final leave of the vicinity I made a side 
trip to Newport. A little steamer took me part way. 



Along Shore in Rhode Island 239 

and then I went on by trolley over gently rolling farm- 
lands. The fields were clean and attractive, the farm 
homes looked symbolic of thrift, and here and there 
were conical stacks of hay, sometimes occurring singly, 
sometimes in groups, and always charming in their 
grace of outline, and their suggestion of a goodly store 
of winter food for the stock. 

The world hears of Newport almost wholly as a 
resort of multi-millionaires who have palatial summer 
homes there; and one fancies that the town must be 
quite impressive in the beauty of its situation and in its 
noble thoroughfares and costly architecture. But In 
reality it is a rather quiet and ordinary old village with 
the narrow streets and quaint crowded wooden build- 
ings characteristic of so many of the colonial towns 
along the New England coast. It looked as if it might 
sleep on endlessly in comfortable stagnation; yet In 
the minds of some of its residents It has a glorious future 
and will In time rival New York as a seaport and com- 
mercial center. 

The Newport of the people of wealth and fashion is 
off on the outskirts, a settlement by Itself, and appar- 
ently having no influence on the aspect of the old port 
village. Here the "big-bugs," to quote a local designa- 
tion, have built their mansions on an upland that juts 
seaward with a long ragged frontage of cliffs. The 
offlook afforded is delightful and the situation conveys 
hints of a breezy summer coolness that makes It in its 
way quite Ideal. Some one has said that the homes of 



240 Highways and Byways of New England 

this community, while in themselves charming to the 
beholder, are like jewels without a setting — that is, 
the grounds about are too circumscribed to give the 
architecture its full effect. No doubt this is to some 
degree the case, yet so far as the buildings fronting on 
the sea were concerned, they seemed to me not crowded, 
but only socially near each other. 

Notes. — The visitor to Rhode Island will naturally wish to see 
Providence, the capital of the state. Roger Williams started a settle- 
ment there in 1636 after fleeing from persecution in Massachusetts, 
and named the place out of gratitude for his escape. In the city are 
many fine examples of colonial architecture, and the suburbs offer 
opportunities for delightful drives. 

Newport, called by the Indians Aquidneck — the Isle of Peace — 
was commercially more important than New York in 1770. In one 
of its parks can be seen that famous historical relic, the old Stone 
Mill, claimed to have been built by the Norsemen about the year 
1000. A notable attraction of the shore is the Cliff Walk which 
for three miles runs along the brow of the bluffs that front the ocean. 
To see the magnificent palaces of the wealthy and fashionable 
summer colony at all completely requires a drive of ten miles. The 
boating, bathing, and fishing, and the motoring trips around the 
city are unexcelled. Newport takes especial pride in the remarkable 
mildness of its climate, for the summer is comparatively cool, and 
the average winter temperature is higher than that of Washington. 

The main highways in the state are macadam, and many of the 
others are good gravel or dirt. 



XIII 

OLD put's country 

ONE of the most vigorously original and inter- 
esting characters of our colonial and Revolu- 
tionary days was General Israel Putnam. For 
the greater part of his life he made his home at Pomfret, 
Connecticut; and thither I journeyed drawn by the 
lodestone of his fame, which the passing years have 
enhanced rather than diminished. I knew nothing of 
the place beforehand, except that on the map it looked 
quite remote from everywhere, and I hoped to find it a 
sleepy and rustic little town with a gentle flavor of the 
long ago still lingering in its aspect and manner of life. 
I arrived one windy and chilly evening in the month 
of May, and climbed the long hill that led to the village. 
It has a truly noble site on the hilltop, where it enjoys 
the best of air and sweeping views in all directions. 
But the old-time hamlet has been inundated with 
summer residents from the cities, its former homes have 
been either wiped out or rejuvenated beyond recogni- 
tion, and it was too garish and new and too mani- 
festly artificial to give unalloyed delight. I could not 
find a single structure on Pomfret Hill that carried the 
imagination back to the past. Even the ancient wooden 
church had lost its robes of white and had been painted 



242 Highways and Byways of New England 

in modern colors to conform to the wishes of the pro- 
prietor of an adjacent hotel who wanted its tints to 
match those of his hotel. The feature of the village 
that I liked best was a big boys' school. The buildings 
were pleasing, the situation on that high, tree-em- 
bowered hill was ideal, and the boy students enlivening 
the neighborhood with their coming and going, and with 
their sports on the playgrounds, had real charm. 

There were two hotels, and I applied at one of them 
for lodging. A lady who seemed to be the manager 
regarded me suspiciously, made some inquiries about 
my business, and politely yet firmly turned me away 
with the excuse that they were doing some renovating 
that made it inconvenient to receive guests just then. 

I trudged off to the other hotel and entered the office. 
At a roll-top desk in a corner sat the proprietor — a 
stout and florid individual who was an epitome of well- 
fed comfort. He was examining a bill very attentively 
through a magnifying glass, and I awaited his leisure. 
Finally he swung around and brought me into the 
range of his vision and I proffered my request for lodg- 
ing. But he said he did not take transients. I told 
him how I had fared at the other hotel and asked him 
what I was to do. He did not know, but spoke of a 
boarding-house where the barn help lodged, only he 
believed that was full, and on the whole was inclined 
to recommend that I seek the next town, seven miles 
distant. 

So I left him. I had my doubts about the excuses 




Making a rug 



Old Put's Country 243 

of these hotel people, and could only conclude that the 
style in which I travelled was not to them satisfactorily 
suggestive of opulence. My chief desire now was to 
get off the hill and away from that modern hamlet of 
wealth. The sun had set, and the mirk of night was 
fast thickening, and I was increasingly anxious to find 
shelter. Presently I accosted a man I met and told 
him my experience. "I suppose," I said in conclusion, 
"that I might go and spend the night in Putnam's 
wolf den." 

"Yes, you might," he responded; "but it wouldn't 
be advisable. Them rocks harbor too many rattle- 
snakes. So the hotels wouldn't take you in.'' You'd 
got the money to pay for' your accommodation, hadn't 
you.? And no bugs or anything of that sort.'' Well, 
I've known the proprietor of the second place you 
applied at ever since he was a boy, and that man wants 
the earth with a barbed wire fence round it. But I'll 
tell you where you can get kept. You go right on along 
this road to the third house and try there. You'll find 
quite a family — the man has married a second time and 
got some young children — kind of a rowen crop — but 
he'll make room for you." 

My chance acquaintance was right, and the shelter 
for which I asked was granted. The "rowen crop" 
had already gone to bed, but I sat and talked for a 
while with my host. "Thirty-five or forty years ago," 
he said, "this was strictly a farming town, and up on 
the hill was an old-fashioned church and a village of 



244 Highways and Byways of New England 

white or red farmhouses. Some of those old houses are 
there yet; but they're a good deal like the Irishman's 
shirt — he patched it till you couldn't see the original 
cloth. Yes, the new owners have remodelled 'em, and 
built on porte-cochers and the devil knows what so't 
now they don't look anything like the houses they used 
to be. 

"A few of us outside of the village still farm. Our 
worst trouble Is in finding help. Seems as if everybody 
had an Idea of getting a living some other way than by 
working for it. Wages are going up and the workers 
are becoming more independent all the time. I hire 
help a good deal, and yet I consider myself a laboring 
man; for I work hard all day and nearly every day. I 
think I can see both sides, and the feature of the case 
to my mind Is this — the relative positions of employer 
and employed are much the same as that of a man to 
his horses and oxen. If our beasts of burden knew 
their strength we couldn't control 'cm. Well, the 
working-people are beginning to find out their power, 
and often they ain't wisely led and just smash things. 
It's created sort of an unnatural condition." 

While we were talking he had a call at the telephone 
and in responding to it I noticed that he inquired rather 
solicitously after someone's health. When he hung up 
the receiver he turned to me, saying, "I was speaking 
with a house where there's an old lady nearly ninety. 
She's been quite sick, and they thought she would die. 
Her two daughters were a good deal flustered getting 



Old Put's Country 245 

the house ready for the funeral; but the old lady is 
better, and she's got up and is bossing the job herself." 

The next morning I started off to hunt up Putnam's 
wolf den, which was two or three miles distant. The 
same chilly, tempestuous wind I had encountered the 
day before was blowing; yet the birds sang cheerfully, 
and the swallows skimming low over the meadows 
seemed not to mind either the gale or the cold. Nor 
was I uncomfortable myself. The weather would have 
to be very sharp indeed when one could not get warm 
walking up hill and down dale among those billowy 
uplands. Stone walls were the common fencing of the 
region. They hemmed in the roadways and divided 
the fields with their gray, lichened bulwarks, and the 
ruddy-leaved poison ivy vines crept in and out of their 
crevices, and other wild shrubbery throve along their 
borders comparatively safe from the attacks of the 
thrifty farmers. They were the castles, too, of the 
mice and similar little creatures, though you might 
scarcely suspect the presence of these inhabitants, they 
so seldom showed themselves. 

Fully two thousand people visit the den every year 
and the route leading from the public way off to the 
woodland in which it is located is a well travelled road. 
"The visitors are from all over the country," one of the 
local dwellers explained to me. "You ain't no idea how 
far some of 'em come. In fact, those from a distance are 
apt to take more interest than those whose homes are 
close by. Now, my grandfather lived eighty-four years 



246 Highways and Byways of New England 

within a mile of the wolf den, and part of the time he 
owned the land it was on; but he didn't care about It 
and never went to see It." 

The pilgrims to the wolf den usually go In teams, and 
they can drive to within a few rods of it, and from the 
hitchlng-place a multitude of feet have made a plainly- 
marked trail that took me right to the spot. There I 
stood before a black opening that went back Into a 
shattered ledge, and the great blocks of granite were 
cleft so regularly and lay so well-arranged to form the 
cavern that you would almost suspect it was the work 
of some gigantic aboriginal builder. 

The opening was about two feet wide, and high 
enough to allow a man to crawl In on his hands and 
knees; but the space between roof and floor became 
more cramped farther In. The brown last year's leaves 
lay strewn about outside, and a strawberry plant was 
in bloom and a tuft of grass grew in gentle security at 
the very mouth of the savage cavity. It was on a 
rough, steep hillside thinly wooded with oaks that 
sprang up from the rock-strewn earth. Boughs and 
bushes were everywhere feathered with new leafage 
which was tremulous with the wind soughing through 
the forest. Except for the music of this sylvan harp 
there was almost complete silence, though I recall a 
woodpecker on one of the tree-trunks making a zigzag 
study of the bark and tapping here and there In spots 
that seemed promising. No doubt nature was just as 
quiet In that far-gone time when the crowd of men and 




The zvolf den 



Old Put's Country 247 

boys gathered here to destroy the wolf that had been 
driven into Its lair. 

Putnam had come to Pomfret in 1738 at the age of 
twenty-two, shortly after his marriage. He did not 
live on Pomfret Hill where I had been the evening 
previous, but five miles south in the village of Brook- 
lyn. "In those days of comparative simplicity," one 
of his biographers says, writing in 1846, "few of the 
costly luxuries of the present day were known. The 
hard and burdensome yoke of European fashion, which 
grinds so many of us into the dust was not laid on the 
colonies." 

It Is no wonder then that a man of Putnam's in- 
dustry and energy should in a few years find himself 
possessed of a comfortable and substantial home, his 
clearings well fenced and cultivated, and his pastures 
handsomely stocked. Like many of his neighbors 
he had a flock of sheep, and in common with them he 
suffered year after year from the ravages of a certain 
she-wolf. They recognized their enemy by her foot- 
prints; for she had at some time been caught in a trap 
and escaped by leaving the toes of one foot behind. 
When too closely pursued to carry on her depredations 
any longer with safety she would abandon the vicinity 
altogether for the season. But she invariably returned 
the ensuing winter, and at last Putnam entered into 
an agreement with five of his neighbors to watch for 
and follow the wolf until she was killed. 

They began the pursuit immediately after a light fall 



248 Highways and Byways of New England 

of snow at the opening of the winter. Over the hills, 
through forest and swamp they went to the banks of a 
stream six miles distant. There the wolf turned and 
made back directly to Pomfret and entered the now 
famous den in the rocks. Here a guard was set, and a 
crowd of men and boys assembled from the region 
around with dogs and guns, straw and sulphur. A 
fire was made in the mouth of the cave, but neither 
smoke nor fumes had any effect — probably because they 
escaped in the crevices before they penetrated to the 
innermost recess where the wolf was. 

The hours passed with various fruitless efforts until 
It was nearly midnight, and then Putnam proposed to 
take a torch and go into the cavern to investigate. 
His neighbors remonstrated in vain. After fastening 
a rope to one of his legs and ordering those outside to 
pull him forth when he signalled by kicking, he stripped 
oif his coat and vest and, armed only with a torch, 
crawled In at the opening. When he had advanced 
about twenty feet he saw the glaring eyeballs of the 
wolf at the farther end of the cavity, scarcely three 
yards distant. He gave a hearty kick at the rope, and 
his friends pulled him out in all haste, much to the 
detriment of his clothes and person. But he got him- 
self into shape, took his gun and a fresh torch and again 
entered the cave. As soon as he was near enough to see 
the wolf distinctly he took aim and fired. The con- 
cussion and the smoke almost overpowered him, but 
the crowd outside hauled him forth into the open air 



Old Put's Country 249 

where he quickly revived. Then for a third time he 
entered the cave, where he found the wolf dead. So he 
seized her by the ears, kicked the rope, and out he was 
dragged with the wolf In his wake. 

To see Putnam's home village I had to retrace my 
steps and take another road — a more travelled way 
than the one I had been pursuing, yet closely akin in 
its bordering of stone walls and in its manner of going 
up and over the big rolling hills. Neither for riding nor 
walking was it at its best just then; for the town 
scraper was at work on it, scooping out a deep depres- 
sion on each side and heaving up a steep, arched ridge 
In the middle. The scraper left the surface compara- 
tively soft, and a fortnight's travel would be needed to 
harden it. There were occasional farmhouses, but they 
were as a rule so far apart that the country had a touch 
of loneliness in its aspect. Once I startled a pair of 
fat woodchucks in a wayside mowing lot, and they 
scuttled off through the grass as fast as they could go. 
A little farther on, a chipmunk who was trotting along 
his own special highway, the stone wall, caught sight 
of me and whisked Into a cranny among the stones. 
Then he turned about and watched me with alert-eyed 
intentness. 

Brooklyn proved to be a tidy, mild little place on 
the undulating lowlands. There were fine trees lining 
the streets, and there was a grassy common on which 
stood a slender-spired wooden church built considerably 
more than a century ago. Putnam lived opposite the 



250 Highways and Byways of New England 

green, and for a time he kept his house as a tavern. 
Some of the elms now growing on the street were 
planted by him, and he helped build the church and 
was its bell-ringer. His connection with the place 
throws over it a certain halo of attraction, and even 
without that the impression it makes is decidedly 
pleasing. 

It is, however, suburban rather than rustic, and a 
hired man with whom I chatted on the outskirts 
explained the situation by saying, "The heft of the 
people have got some money. But they didn't make it 
themselves. It was all left to them. They mostly 
cultivate a little land, though their doing so ain't 
necessary, and they don't look to that for any profit. 
They wouldn't get very fat if they had to farm. Yes, 
they're well fixed, and it doesn't make any difference to 
them whether school keeps or not. They sit around, 
and eat, and ride out a little and take life easy gen- 
erally. But if you want to see a village where the people 
are all rich go over to Pomfret Hill. That's a summer 
resort, and the folks come and go a good deal like wild 
geese. Some of 'em only stay a month. It's a stuck-up 
place. I worked there one season, and I got enough of 
it. They want you to work for small wages and are 
just as tight as if they were poor. Our wealthy people 
ain't throwing away any money. Some of 'em with a 
good big pile never pay a bill if they can help it. I 
know one man who's got all his property in his wife's 




Schoolboys 



Old Put's Country 251 

name. Try to collect from him and he ain't worth a 
cent, not one," 

The field in which Putnam was ploughing when the 
news of the battle of Lexington was brought to him 
was some of his outlying land two miles from Brooklyn 
up a hill toward Pomfret, adjoining the farm of Cap- 
tain Hubbard. He and the captain were ploughing 
within call of each other that April day when the 
mounted courier hastening along and beating a drum 
at intervals, accosted them. Hubbard went to his home 
which was near by, to make ready in an orderly man- 
ner to start for the scene of action. But Putnam merely 
unyoked his oxen from the plough, bade one of his boys 
who was with him go home and tell Mrs. Putnam where 
he was gone, and then mounted his horse and dashed 
away toward Boston. 

"We had that plough of Putnam's on exhibition 
here once," a Pomfret man told me; "and, by gosh! 
when I saw it I didn't blame Putnam for leaving it in 
the field. It wa'n't much but a crooked stick shod 
with iron, and I'll be darned if I'd put it in the barn if 
it was mine. But Putnam was clear grit. He was 
always ready to act. You know how he risked his life 
saving the burning powder magazine, and how he 
galloped down the stone steps to escape the British. 
He was just the same at home. There was one time he 
owned a very fine bull that was ugly as sin. All the 
neighbors were afraid of him; but once when Putnam 
was going through the pasture and the bull acted 



252 Highways and Byways of New England 

threatening, he got mad at the creature. He caught 
him by the tail, twisted it around a small tree so he 
could hold him fast, and gave the animal a sound 
drubbing with an ox goad. The bull bellowed and tore 
up the ground, but couldn't get away till Putnam was 
through with him, and the experience made him a good 
deal more civilized for the future. That's the kind of a 
man Putnam was." 

The house in which the general spent his last years, 
and in which he died, still stands. It is well up on a 
lofty hill between Brooklyn and Pomfret, and though 
it has been enlarged it continues to be a farmhouse and 
preserves much of its original character both inside 
and out. 

When I was nearly back to my lodging place I stopped 
to speak with a man who was lounging in the wayside 
grass baiting his cows. Some schoolboys who hap- 
pened along at about the same time addressed him 
familiarly as "Albert." They, however, showed no 
intentional rudeness, for they were very nice little 
fellows, and it was simply the habit of the region. The 
man said he had as large and fine a farm as there was 
in town, and he was soon telling me about his stock, 
his dog, his garden and all the other things in which he 
took pride. 

"I suppose," I said presently, changing to another 
topic, "that your roads here are too rough and the hills 
too steep for automobiles." 

"No," he replied, "they travel every road we've 



Old Put's Country 253 

got, and they're getting to be awful numerous, too. 
We country people don't like 'em very much. They've 
put too many good horses out of commission. Some 
of our horses have got used to 'em, but others has to go 
crosslots yet, and are liable to tear you up on top of a 
stone wall, if they meet one sudden. The people running 
the machines don't use much judgment. You notice 
that square corner up the road a piece. I've seen 'em 
comin' round there twenty miles an hour, and they 
couldn't see ten feet ahead. 

"I own one horse that ain't afraid of 'em a particle. 
She wouldn't pay any attention if one was to blow up 
right in front of her. There never was a gentler crea- 
ture. One time when I was drivin' her we got tipped 
over into a snowbank, and she stopped at once and stood 
stock still. One thill was on top of her back, and the 
other between her legs. We had to unhitch to get the 
sleigh right side up. There's nothing slow about her, 
if she is gentle. Once I tried following an automobile, 
and for three miles I kept her close behind, right in 
that stink, with her nose rubbing on the shoulder of the 
man in the automobile. When he looked around I'd 
say, 'Get out of the way, or I'll run over your old box!' 

"He never spoke till he reached the place he was 
goin' to, and then he turned and said, 'You've got the 
darndest horse I ever see.' " 

It seemed to me that this man in his encounter with 
the automobile showed something the same spirit that 
Putnam did in taming his savage bull; and if the 



254 Highways and Byways of New England 

doughty general were alive in his prime now, I wonder 
what he would do about these wild modern machines 
that career over the Pomfret hills. But probably he 
would not stay in the Pomfret environment of today. 
His was a pioneer temperament, and he would more 
likely be far away on some remote frontier. 

Notes. — It is a hilly region on the extreme eastern borders of 
the state. A few important roads are macadam. As to the others, 
they are good, bad, and indifferent, but amends are made for any 
difficulties of travel by the varied charm of the landscape. About 
half way to Hartford is Willimantic, the "Thread City" and the 
home of Nathan Hale, the Revolutionary hero. 



XIV 

SHAD TIME ON THE CONNECTICUT 

IN colonial days shad were caught in great numbers 
for more than one hundred and fifty miles up the 
river. Now they scarcely get a third of that dis- 
tance, and comparatively few of them are taken even 
at the best fishing-places. The season includes all of 
May and the first ten days of June, a most delightful 
portion of the year, and the employment is picturesque 
and mildly adventurous. It appeals to the primitive 
instincts in man, and though the diminishing financial 
returns make the fishermen grumble, the fascination 
of the work entices them back each year to the pursuit 
of the finny treasures of the stream. 

To see the fishing at its best I went one June day to a 
village far down toward the mouth of the river. The 
latter portion of the journey was made in the evening 
on one of the large steamers that ply between Hartford 
and New York, and I did not reach my destination 
until ten o'clock. When I came forth from the brightly 
lighted steamer out on a pier there seemed to be noth- 
ing in the surrounding space except the unfathomable 
blackness of the night. But soon my eyes became 
accustomed to the gloom, and I could dimly discern 
buildings and trees and a clouded sky. 



256 Highways and Byways of New England 

I had chatted with one of the officers on the boat 
about the region along shore, and he had said: "I'd 
be afraid to ask for lodging after dark in most of these 
country places. They'd be shootin' me for a chicken 
thief." 

Fortunately this waterside village had a hotel near 
at hand up a short, steep hill and it had not yet closed 
its doors. There I found refuge. 

The next morning I was out early, curious to learn 
the character of the place in which I had stopped. 
There was a little nucleus of stores and shops near the 
wharves, and two or three roads wandered away in 
different directions. The houses were tucked into all 
sorts of nooks and perched on every convenient slope 
and knoll. A short distance back from the river was 
an abrupt and rocky hill that was for the most part 
covered with woods. Trees abounded, too, in the vil- 
lage, and nature in general seemed luxuriant and 
generous. 

There were farms on the outskirts, most of which 
had fallen into the hands of Italians who labored on 
them with an industry and effectiveness that the local 
Yankees either had not the ability or ambition to rival. 
They terrace the rocky slopes and raise grapes and 
peppers. Some of the grapevines were tied to stakes or 
trained to grow on wires strung to lines of posts, and 
others are on overhead wires and form extensive arbors. 
'It's a kind of Eyetalian grapes that they raise," a 
village patriarch explained, "and those grapes do well 



Shad Time on the Connecticut 257 

here. Oh, golly, yes! I measured one bunch that was 
fifteen inches long. But they got a flavor I don't like, 
and I let 'em alone though I naturally eat grapes by 
the bushel. The Eyetalians press out the juice and 
send it to New York to be made into wine. When 
these people go off to spend the day working in their 
fields they carry along a pitcher of wine, and some stale 
bread that is so tough they can hardly bite it, and at 
noon that wine and bread and some of their big green 
peppers right off the vines are their dinner. There's 
always macaroni in everything they cook. I don't care 
for that. I never was fond of angleworms. They used 
to raise a curious kind of beans that they cooked, 
stems, stalks, pods, and all. The beans were so big 
that one of 'em would make a mouthful. They grew 
good here until the white fly raised the divil with 'em. 
Those flies wasn't much more'n an eighth of an inch 
long, but there'd be half a million on a single bean vine. 

"The Eyetalians do take care of the ground and there 
ain't no waste nowhere. Most of the land they culti- 
vate is rocky, but it's nothing like as bad as you find 
on the farms seven or eight miles down the river. The 
country there is all ledges and only fit to pasture sheep 
on. Even then I guess the people have to steel point 
the sheep's noses so they can get the grass." 

Automobiles were often passing on the village roads, 
and yet ox-teams were also much in evidence. Two 
yoke of oxen were apt to draw the loads on the rougher 
and steeper highways. If they stopped for any length 



258 Highways and Byways of New England 

of time in the village while the wagon was being loaded 
or unloaded they would lie down and calmly chew their 
cuds. I was told that one man who lived a few miles 
back in the country was in the habit of hitching seven 
or eight yoke of oxen to his wagon when he was bringing 
lumber to the village, and it was affirmed that his 
motive power was economical because he drew " Infernal 
big loads." Another item of interest was that his oxen 
were as "poor as Death's crows." 

From the hotel piazza I could see a long stretch of 
the river southward, placid and slow-flowing, and 
bordered in places by marshes or meadows, but more 
often by wooded slopes. Now and then a sturdy tug 
ploughed its way up or down dragging a tow of coal 
barges, sometimes a little sloop with canvas spread 
was wafted along the water highway, and numerous 
motor boats chug-chugged hither and thither. 

From the piazza, too, I had a good view of a little 
stream which loitered beneath some graceful, drooping 
elms and joined the river just below. Its farther shore 
was used by the shad fishermen for a landing place, and 
there I visited with a number of them on the first morn- 
ing of my sojourn while they were taking the wet nets 
from the sterns of their boats and spreading them on 
poles a little back from the water to dry. It required 
two men to a net. One stood on each side, and as they 
shook out sticks and rubbish caught in the meshes, and 
patiently untangled the snarls their tongues were busy 
gossiping and chaffing. An elderly man whom the 




Low tide 



Shad Time on the Connecticut 259 

others called "Harry" was perhaps the most com- 
municative in response to my questions. He had a full 
gray beard and wore spectacles which slipped far down 
on his nose. When he walked he limped about with a 
cane, and he accounted for his lameness by saying that 
the knuckle on his knee was broken. 

"I'm seventy-six years old," he informed me, "and 
the combined ages of me and my partner are one 
hundred and fifty-four. I guess there ain't any shad 
crew on the river any older. Two men is the crew for 
a rowboat. When they go out to fish they take along a 
dragnet that is from sixty to ninety rods long. The 
nets cost forty dollars or more apiece and usually only 
last one season. We have this job of cleaning and dry- 
ing 'em every morning. They scrape along on the 
bottom, and you'd be surprised to see the stuff we bring 
in. There's everything from a toothpick up to a saw- 
mill log, and there's clam shells and cinders and tin 
cans, and one feller got a melodeon, or pieces of it, in 
his net. That was after a big rain which washed away 
some dams on a stream that flows into the river above 
here. It took buildings and everything in its wake as 
clean as a whistle, 

"We only go out fishing at night. The shad would 
see the net in the daytime and go round it like sheep 
over a fence. When we slip the net off into the water 
we fasten a tub with a lantern in it to the outer end, 
and the boat is at the other end. All night we drift 
with the tide. If the tide is running up we go down 



26o Highways and Byways of New England 

below half a mile and drop our nets. If the tide is 
running out we start right off the dock, and during the 
night the current and tide together carry us nearly two 
miles downstream. It's time to go out just as soon as 
a shade of darkness strikes the water. We take along 
a jug of drinking water, and we carry a lunch that we eat 
about midnight. Sometimes the wind blows like the 
mischief and makes hard work for us, but on quiet 
nights there's not much to do only to set in the boat 
and chin with one another and swap lies. We have to 
pick up our net if we see a power boat or a steamer 
comin' in our direction. They have the right to the 
channel, and some cap'ns and pilots will go right 
through you, but there's others who will slow down. 
A power boat cut our net in two last night. It was 
running without lights, and if we can find out who the 
feller in that boat was we'll fix him. We'll make a 
complaint and his license will be taken away. 

"Those power boats are a blame nuisance, and the 
fellers who run 'em are the biggest set of ignoramuses 
I've ever seen. They're darn fools, to speak politely 
without slandering 'em. Here's one of them power 
boats now goin' like blazes. It's got a funny-shaped 
prow. Ha, hal see the shovel-nose. He's a noisy one. 

"Some fishermen load their boats with rocks, and if 
a power boat acts mean they put out their lights and 
heave the rocks at it. 

"On Saturdays there's as many as three hundred 
men goin' down in power boats to Saybrook. They'll 



Shad Time on the Connecticut 261 

tell you they're goin' to fish and get clams, but really 
they're goin' to have a Sunday drunk. There are 
clerks and mill-hands and farmers from all along up the 
river as far north as Hartford. Others are sporting 
men who have big boats and make a great splurge. 
Sunday they go back strung along anywhere from 
three in the afternoon to eleven at night, and they're 
either makin' enough noise to scare the devil to death, 
or else they're very quiet. Those that are quiet have 
got their hides full. 

"We quit fishing about four o'clock in the morning. 
We know it's no use after daybreak, and it ain't much 
use before. Me'n' my partner only got three shad last 
night. When we come in with our boat we go home to 
bed. If I git four hours sleep I'm satisfied. I used to 
be a sailor, and I got the habit of having a little nap in 
the afternoon. With the help of that nap it didn't 
bother me any to stay up all night. You'll find that's 
the way with all the old fellers who've been to sea." 

" I don't feel as if I'd slept any for a week," one of the 
younger men observed. He was puffing with sad-eyed 
weariness at a cigaret. Several empty beer bottles lay 
in the bottom of his boat. He took them out and said: 
"Somebody put those in there. Supposing my wife 
came here and see them! There'd be trouble right 
away, wouldn't there. Grumpy?" 

"That's bloody mean, Dan, to put bottles in your 
boat," Grumpy commented. "It's as much as to say 
you drink." 



262 Highways and Byways of New England 

"Well," Dan resumed, "a little sloop lay down at 
the wharf here last night. It was loaded with clams, 
and some of us from the village was in it till one o'clock 
eatin' raw clams and drinkin' beer. We was cussed 
fools. I started with three bottles of beer in front of 
me and one in my hand, and I emptied 'em all. When 
I got home I didn't dare go in the house. So I lay down 
in the woodshed on some shavings. Early in the morn- 
ing I slipped away, and I haven't been back yet. I 
don't know whether my wife will give me any break- 
fast or not. If she won't I'll go to the hotel and buy a 
sandwich." 

I asked Grumpy how he got his nickname. 

"When I was a kid," he said, "there was an old man 
who used to trot me on his knee and give me candy and 
sing songs to me. He was always makin' rhymes, and 
one of his rhymes that I was very fond of was this: 

"Old Grumbo Chaff" lived in the wood; 
He e't all the boys and girls he could. 
Some he greased and swallowed whole, 
And he lived so long he swallowed the world. 

"That's where I got my nickname. It should be 
Grumbo, but people call me Grump or Grumpy." 

"Your boat didn't come in when the others did this 
morning," Harry remarked. 

"No," Grumpy responded, "our net caught on a 
thundering big stump. We got hung up and had to 



Shad Time on the Connecticut 263 

wait till the tide turned. While we were waiting I 
went on shore and slept in the mud under the root of 
a tree." 

"Not all of us use drag nets," Harry said to me. 
"Some tie bricks on along the bottom of the net so the 
tide and current won't carry it along. There's one 
man puts in a net that way just across the river, and 
he's got a tent on the shore. He sits in the tent at 
night and rests a little and peeks out once in a while 
so if any steamboat or motor boat is coming he can go 
and pick up the net." 

"Shad fishing is a hard life any way you're a min' to 
fix it," Grumpy declared. "You want to wear your 
oldest clothes because it'll spoil 'em, and you want lots 
of 'em because the nights are cold. However, there's 
money in fishing if you get a good ketch." 

Every now and then the men would come across a 
snarl in their nets that they called a twizzle, and often 
a good deal of time and patience were required to pick 
and shake it out. "All sorts of fish make twizzles," 
Dan said. "Sometimes a little alewife will make one 
of the meanest sort." 

During the morning rowboats were arriving from 
points up and down the river bringing shad to a neigh- 
boring dock, and each new arrival was sure to be greeted 
with the query, "How'd they run this time.'"' None 
of the fishermen had caught enough to brag about. 

"It's like this," one man explained; "the shad go in 
shoals together, and if one boat has a good ketch they 



264 Highways and Byways of New England 

all do. I call it a poor season. The boats come in with 
ten or twelve shad. That's about a third less than last 
year. We never do as well In a Democratic adminis- 
tration. There was a poor run of shad when Cleveland 
was president, same as there is now that Wilson is in. 
It seems like a put up job," 

The men in the boats tossed the shad up into a large 
shallow box when they were washed, and afterward 
they were packed In Ice to send away. While this work 
was going forward a villager came and wanted to buy 
a "good" shad. 

Harry turned to me and remarked: "I ain't seen a 
decent shad this morning. Half of 'em have thrown 
their spawn, and after that they're as rank as sow pig 
meat. But they sell good to the greenhorns In the cities. 
When I go past a house where they're cookin' shad I 
can tell by the smell whether it's spawned. If they're 
cookin' eels I hold my nose till I get by. Yes, eels are 
pretty bad to my smeller. People say they are good 
eatin', but they ain't good for me. As for shad, you 
won't ketch no fisherman to eat even a roe shad, not 
unless it's salted. Give me a good buck shad every 
time. Say, you may laugh at me, but let me tell you 
how to cook a shad right. First split him open. Some 
take the backbone out, but that cuts off" too many 
fine bones. Don't forgit to salt and pepper him. Then 
take a frying pan and cover the bottom with pork 
sliced thin. Lay your fish onto the pork and put more 
pork on top of him. You need a few spoonfuls of water 



Shad Time on the Connecticut 265 

in the pan so he won't stick on. Cover the pan up and 
shove it in the oven. In half an hour pour on a little 
cream and leave the pan in the oven with the cover off. 
When the fish is nicely browned add more water and 
ten minutes later take him out and eat him, and if you 
don't say that's the best shad you ever e't tell me I 
don't know how to cook. It'll make your mouth 
water." 

In the afternoon I sat on the hotel piazza looking off 
over the river. A door at the far end of the piazza gave 
entrance to an odorous bar-room where the fishermen 
and others did much guzzling and loud talking, and 
presently a weazened little old man came forth, stopped 
before me, and regarded me quizzically. "Ain't you a 
lawyer,?" he asked. 

When I told him I was not he slapped me on the 
shoulder and said: "I'm glad of it. There's too many 
of 'em. I never saw you before, and I may never see 
you again, but there's worse fellers than you be, I'll 
bet. One of our village girls married a Southern man, 
and they come here to visit after a year or two. We'd 
understood he was a poor man, but they seemed to be 
prosperin' and when we asked her about it she said, 
'We're livin' on other folks' quarrellin' and gettin' 
along very well.' He was a lawyer, don't you see.'' 
There was an Irishwoman here who always used to 
speak of him in her brogue as a Miar;' and she wasn't 
so very far wrong either, hey.^* That's what a lawyer 
is, most generally. W^ell, I've been in there (he pointed 



266 Highways and Byways of New England 

with his thumb toward the bar-room), and I'm a little 
bit exhilarated, but that's straight what I said about 
the lawyers. Shake hands. Good-by." 

Shortly afterward Harry joined me and sat down to 
visit. He was too old to have regular employment, 
but he did odd jobs in the village and gravitated around 
in the vicinity of the bar-room. While we talked he 
chewed, and at regular intervals he got up and hobbled 
with his cane to the edge of the piazza to spit. 

"I've lived alone ever since my wife died seven years 
ago," he said. "My children have been urgin' me to 
come and live with them, but I don't see it that way. 
For instance, one of 'em lives in New Haven, and I'd 
as lief be in Tophet as in the city. There's too much 
noise and too much stink. I want to be among the 
trees where there's birds. I want to live as I want to 
live and cook to suit myself. 

"The birds and the other little wild animals git very 
tame around my place. The sparrows — good Lord! 
they come right into the house. Some robins build in 
the grapevine at my back door. If I put my hand in 
their nest to feel whether there's eggs or young birds in 
it the old robins scold me, but I tell 'em, 'I ain't goin' 
to hurt you.' 

"Two little birds that sing like katydids comes every 
year 'bout the first of July and set on the clothesline 
and sing to me. They're kind of a bronze color and 
ain't much bigger'n my thumb. I can hold out a plate 
with cracker crumbs on it and they'll eat off it. 




Comparing Jish 



Shad Time on the Connecticut 267 

"I've got an educated cat that I raised from a kitten. 
He is maltese and white. I say, 'Chub, you rascal! 
you do so and so;' and he does it. If I tell him to say 
his prayers he'll set right up on his stern and drop his 
paws and his head down. When he asks for grub he 
sets up and makes his paws go. A woman school teacher 
was callin' on me one day and tellin' that animals had 
got no reason. We had quite an argument. Chub 
lay on the grass near by, and after a while I called to 
him and said, "Walk up and shake hands with the 
lady.' 

"He came to her and shoved out his paw the first 
thing, and she said, 'I give in.' 

"Once I showed Chub the hole of a ground mole in 
a neighbor's garden and says, 'Now you ketch that 
ground mole,' and he stayed there until he caught it. 
He didn't eat it. Moles are poison to a cat, and I don't 
know of any animal that'll eat 'em. 

"Last night, after I got home from fishing, I hadn't 
been asleep long when Chub woke me up. He and 
another cat were in the yard makin' a great noise. I 
went out to see what was the matter, and there was 
Chub settin' up cufhn' the other cat's ears. He knocked 
him galley west. Then I cuffed Chub's ears and sent 
him in the house. 

"I c'n remember things when I was a kid only four 
years old. It was at that age I had the whooping 
cough, and I had it terribly, I tell you! There was a 
brook near the house, — a regular trout brook, shallow 



268 Highways and Byways of New England 

and gravelly. The suckers would foller up It to git to 
a still spot to lay their spawn, and I used to wade in 
after 'em. That spring when I was coughin' I ketched 
a big sucker in the brook — ^just grabbed him. I got 
wet from head to foot, but I was goin' to git that 
sucker, whether or no. I hugged him right up in my 
arms, and I can see that sucker's face now lookin' up 
into mine. He was a big one — oh, golly yes! — must 
have weighed two pound. 

"But as I was comin' out of the water with him my 
sister ketched me, and then I certainly was in a pickle. 
She called me a mushrat and give me a slammin'. I 
don't know what become of the sucker, but I know I 
got the lickin', and in less'n an hour I was in that brook 
again. Now they won't let a child with the whooping 
cough git his feet wet or anything else. But I guess I 
was in that brook every day until finally they tied me 
up in the house. 

"A few years ago a boy not much older'n I was then 
made quite a business ketchin' suckers in that brook. 
He'd wade in and throw 'em out. They're a lazy sort 
of fish anyway. I've seen him line the bank with 'em. 
He sold what he could, and left the rest on the bank to 
stink. At last the neighbors stopped him. They had 
to. They couldn't stand it. 

"My father was what was called a master of the 
square and compass. He could do all joiner work, and 
I learned his trade. I was quick of eye and quick of 
hand, but up to the time I was twenty years old ninety- 



Shad Time on the Connecticut 269 

six pounds was the most I'd ever weighed in my life. 
They used to call me the Runt; and yet later I got to 
be the biggest of the family. Yes, there was fourteen 
of us children, and I was the largest of the lot. When 
I was a young man I wore my hair long — just had a 
notion to wear it that way, but one day an older brother 
and another feller got me down and tied me and 
sheared my hair all off. My godfrey! They didn't 
leave it an inch long. 

"That made me a little mad, and I swore I wouldn't 
have my hair cut again by them nor nobody else for 
five years. Then I slid out and went to New London, 
and I wasn't there but a few days when I got a chance 
to go to sea. I was a sailor from that time on until I 
was nearly forty. My longest voyage was up the 
Amazon after nuts, rubber, and wild animals. I kept 
out of reach of them animals. But I got a little monkey 
for myself. They had the smallest monkeys there I 
ever see. Mine wa'n't half the size of a cat. I caught 
him by boring a hole in a box just big enough for him 
to git his hand through and putting a lump of sugar 
inside. That's the way to ketch monkeys. They grab 
the sugar and then can't draw their hand out, but they 
won't never let go of it. I had my monkey with me 
for two or three trips. Then I sold him. It got to be 
too much of a nuisance waiting on him. 

"After I'd been to sea five years I landed in New 
York, and I went into a barber shop and got sheared 
and shampooed. It was a great fashion then among 



270 Highways and Byways of New England 

all sailors to wear their hair long and keep it rolled up 
under their caps. Mine never bothered me only once 
in a while when it got full of water. The barber un- 
rolled my hair and it hung down to the small of my 
back. He was a wigmaker, and he told me he'd give 
two dollars for it and throw in a new collar and a 
necktie. Says I, 'Git at it, mister;' and I didn't let 
it grow long again. 

"Twenty years ago we couldn't have set here half 
an hour lookin' down on the river without seein' the 
sturgeon leap. They'd leap clean out of the water, 
gosh, yes! and fall back on it — spat! But they're 
'bout gone now. The biggest one I ever see was 
ketched right across the river here. My Lord! he 
measured sixteen feet long and weighed five hundred 
or more. Well, sir, that was close to sixty years ago. 
My father bought a chunk of it — paid three cents a 
pound. I tasted it, and I know I've never wanted any 
sturgeon since. They're too oily for me. 

"We used to have salmon in the river, but I ain't 
seen any lately. They don't like this water now. It's 
too slimy and dirty and foul, but there was a time when 
it was as nice, sweet water as you'd want to drink. 
Whaleships would come up here to git water to carry 
to sea. Now they might fill their oil casks if they dis- 
tilled it a little. The power boats make filth, and so do 
the mills. Some of the best trout streams in the state 
have been spoiled by drainage from shops built along side. 
Trout don't mind sawmills, but they can't stand oil. 



Shad Time on the Connecticut 271 

"Along 'bout 1880 the government stocked the river 
with salmon and they got to be quite plenty. We'd 
ketch 'em every night in our hauling seines, and people 
were crazy for 'em. They'd pay dollar and a quarter 
a pound for those caught the first of the season, and 
the price never went below forty cents. I've had my 
dinner, but I could eat a good big hunk of salmon right 
now. Shad can't commence the same year with it. 

"I love to ketch black bass. Usually we troll for 
'em. When you hook one he'll go to the bottom and 
then come up and jump out of the water. If he gits 
any slack line he'll jerk the hook out. Oh, they're 
spunky and fight like a steer. Some fellers caught a 
striped bass here in a seine net once that weighed ninety 
pounds, and they stuffed pebbles down his throat until 
they made him weigh a hundred. 

"There used to be three hundred shad-hauling seines 
between here and Saybrook Bar. Now I don't know 
of one. A seine would reach clear across the river. 
The fishermen wouldn't go out without ketchin' one 
hundred and fifty or two hundred shad in them days. 
Once I see sixteen hundred drawn out. In that haul 
there was one shad which weighed nine and a half 
pounds. That's 'bout as large as they grow. I've 
heard of 'em weighin' twelve pounds, but darned if I 
believe it." 

About this time Grumpy came loitering to where we 
sat on the piazza. " Is it hot this afternoon f " he asked ; 
and when we replied in the affirmative he said, "That's 



272 Highways and Byways of New England 

the way I feel, but I didn't know but 'twas the gin 
that's in me." 

"I can hear a quail callin'," Harry remarked. *'We 
don't have them very plenty now. Folks tell 'bout 
hard winters and foxes, but that's not what has 
cleaned 'em out. There's too many good guns and too 
many good dogs. I can remember when they'd come 
right into our yards and feed with the chickens and 
hens." 

"A little quail is lively and clever just as soon as he's 
hatched," Grumpy affirmed. "He'll run off with a 
shuck on his tail, and if you undertake to reach for him 
he'll hide before you can get him." 

"I saw a loon this morning," Harry said. "Every 
once in a while we ketch one that has got into our nets 
diving." 

"You know when you get one all right," Grumpy 
commented. "He'll tell you all about it. They holler 
so you can hear 'em forty miles." 

"Oh! they got an awful scream in 'em," Harry 
agreed. "I used to could mimic 'em. When we ketch 
one we make him fast in the boat and bring him on 
shore to have some fun. You have to be careful hand- 
ling 'em. They got a bill as sharp as a needle. If they 
hit you they leave a sore every time. One night an- 
other feller and me took a loon to the upper landing 
where there was a young ladies' seminary. We had a 
muffler on him, but when we was on the green right in 
front of the school we slipped it off. He fetched 'bout 



Shad Time on the Connecticut 273 

three yells, and if we didn't see ghosts up at them win- 
dows don't ask any questions!" 

"I put a loon in old Gus Farley's fish box once," 
Grumpy said. "By and by Gus come to put his shad 
in the box, and as soon as he lifted the cover the loon 
commenced to holler, and Gus run. Gee whiz! you 
bet he did. Most any one would to hear that noise 
right in their face. 

"Snapping turtles are another thing that make some 
excitement for us. We caught a big one night before 
last. He'd torn two or three holes in the net big enough 
to drive a horse and wagon through before we got him 
into the boat. His head was as large as my two fists, 
and he must have weighed thirty or forty pounds. We 
was soon sorry that we had him. He was raisin' the 
dickens in the boat, and after a while he got hold of the 
toe of my shoe. How that son of a gun did hang! I 
couldn't get loose until I run my jackknife into his jaw. 
I killed him and threw him overboard." 

"You ought to have harnessed him and then he'd 
have stayed still," Harry said. "Put a cord through 
his mouth and tie it under his tail and you've got him. 
You could have sold him for good money. Turtles are 
fine eating. They got chicken meat and veal and all 
kinds of meat in 'em. 

"Most every spring I find some of their eggs. They 
dig a hole a few inches deep in dry sand and lay thirty 
or forty eggs that they leave for the heat of the sun to 
hatch. The skunks dig the eggs out and eat 'em 



274 Highways and Byways of New England 

quicker'n powder. When the little turtles hatch they're 
'bout as big as a silver half dollar and blind as a bat. 
Their eyes ain't open more'n a kitten's, but they know 
the way to the water and start for It right off. The 
turtles crawl Into spring holes and spend the winter 
'bout a foot down In the mud, and fellers hunt for 'em 
and pull 'em out with something like a meathook 
fastened to a six foot handle. I caught nine that way 
once out of one spring hole, and I guess the smallest 
would weigh fifteen pounds." 

"I think a carp struck our net last night," Grumpy 
observed. "Anyhow it made a thundering splash. I 
don't like the rascals." 

"There's some terrible big ones In the river here," 
Harry commented. "They're a specie of sucker, and 
darn coarse grain and darn coarse tastin'. Oh! they're 
miserable eatin', but the Jews and Germans go for 'em 
like sin. I just as soon eat a piece of mud. They say 
the way to do with a carp Is to dress it all up in good 
shape and stuff it with shavings and cook it; then 
throw away the carp and eat the shavings." 

"They're a handsome fish just the same," Grumpy 
affirmed, "and they got a back on 'em like an ox. I 
saw one near my boat the other day that I should say 
weighed twenty-five pounds. He had his nose down 
and was rooting right along In the mud like a pig in a 
manure pile. The water was shallow and I reached 
down to ketch him. But he gave a plunge that very 
near upset the boat. You might as well attempt to 




Shad time on the Connecticut 



Shad Time on the Connecticut 275 

hold a horse as to hold a carp when he gets started. 
However, if I'd got my two hands under him I'd have 
h'isted him out all right. The last one we caught I sold 
to a bear of a Jew who lives across the river. He was 
bound to have it. 'But I got no money today,' he 
said. 'I pay you Saturday.' 

" 'If you don't I'll send Bill Russell, the sheriff after 
you,' I told him. 

"How a carp will thump with his tail after you get 
him in your boat! If there's a little water in the bottom 
you'll think it's raining for a while. One night me'n' 
Hen, my partner, was on the spawning ground where it 
was against the law to be, and we caught a carp. He 
was a monster, and as soon as his tail got goin' you 
could hear him a mile. That wouldn't do, for we can't 
never tell when the fish officers will come around. Hen 
stepped on the carp to keep him still and almost got 
tipped overboard. Then we grabbed him and shoved 
him into the cubby at the bow. I thought he'd pound 
it to pieces, but he didn't make so much noise. We put 
out three ten-rod nets that night and got more than 
two hundred shad. They made such a load that the 
sides of the boat wasn't two inches out of water. We 
use pieces of old last year's net when we go fishin' up 
the cove where we're not supposed to go, so even if the 
fish warden ketches us and takes 'em away we wouldn't 
feel very bad." 

"Well," Harry said, "the shad season will soon end, 
but I'm goin' to ketch enough afterward to salt down 



276 Highways and Byways of New England 

half a barrel for my own use. The fishermen here, too, 
always make a drift on the third of July to git a shad 
to eat on the Fourth. A year ago I told the fish warden 
I was goin' to ketch a Fourth of July shad, and he said, 
"Well, by ginger! if one was hung on my door there'd 
be money comin' for it sometime.' 

"He got his shad. I've seen 'em caught as late as 
the seventh of September, but they was hard lookin' 
subjects. After the shad have spawned they return 
to the sea. We ketch 'em on the back side of the net 
now. Farther down the river lots of fish are caught 
in pounds and fike nets. A law was passed against 
such fishing ten years ago, but soon afterward it was 
modified to allow the fishermen to wear out their nets, 
and those nets ain't worn out yet. They're like the 
Irishman's knife — it had had six new blades and two 
new handles, but he said it was the same knife his 
father used. The mesh of the nets is small, and they 
ketch lots of little shad six or eight inches long goin' 
down the river in the fall. Those little shad ain't good 
for anything but mackerel bait. It's a wonder that any 
shad git up here considering all the nets there are in 
the river down below, but they're sly and slippery, and 
if it wasn't for the pounds and fikes and the fishing on 
the spawning grounds there'd be as many as ever. 

"The biggest mystery we have is little eels the length 
of your finger. For about a week the last of May there's 
a strip of 'em four or five feet wide going up the river 
near the shore on each side, and you can't turn 'em 



Shad Time on the Connecticut 277 

down. They go along just as thick as they can swim, 
almost, and millions of them little fellers go by in a 
day. Every kind of fish swallow 'em. If they all 
matured you could walk across the river on eels." 

One day I went back inland a few miles through the 
woods to the little manufacturing village of Moodus. 
It is in a hilly region which furnishes excellent water- 
power, and a dozen small factories dotted the irregular 
valleys. The mills are always running, and good times 
or bad times make no difference. Most of their owners 
live in the place, and chief among them is a man of 
whom a local resident said: "He wears a straw hat 
winter and summer. Sometimes, after a good nice 
shower, he'll take off his shoes and stockings and walk 
around. Well, I tell you it's healthy to get the feet 
aired out. If his help ask for more pay he'll say: 
*Look how poor I am. I have to go barefoot same as 
you.' But he's worth at least half a million, and he 
ain't got chick nor child to spend his money. That 
man ain't goin' to the poorhouse very soon." 

My visit to Moodus was made largely because of a 
peculiar fame it has for noises. Indeed, its original 
Indian name was Mackinmoodus, which means, the 
place of noises. Strange subterranean sounds commonly 
spoken of as "Moodus Noises" have been heard in the 
region from time immemorial. The town's first 
minister, writing in 1729 says: "As to earthquakes I 
have something considerable and awful to tell. Earth- 
quakes have been here, and nowhere but in this precinct. 



278 Highways and Byways of New England 

I have been informed that in this place, before the Eng- 
lish settlements, the Indians drove a prodigious trade 
at worshipping the devil. Many years past an old 
Indian was asked the reason of the noises. He replied 
that the Indian's god was very angry because the Eng- 
lishman's god was come here. 

"There are no eruptions or explosions, but sounds 
and tremors which sometimes are very fearful. I have 
myself heard eight or ten sounds successively, imitating 
small arms, in the space of five minutes. I suppose I 
have heard several hundred of these within twenty 
years. Sometimes we have heard them almost every 
day. Oftentimes I have heard them coming down from 
the north imitating slow thunder, until the sound came 
near, and then there seemed to be a breaking, like the 
noise of a cannon shot, which shakes the houses and all 
that is in them." 

A citizen of a century later declares that the shock 
given to a dwelling "is the same as the falling of logs 
on the floor," and that any earthquake felt in Con- 
necticut was "far more violent here than in any other 
place." He says of one which occurred at ten o'clock 
in the night of May i8th, 1791 : "Here the concussion 
of the earth, and the roaring of the atmosphere were 
most tremendous. Consternation and dread filled every 
house. Many chimneys were untopped and walls 
thrown down. It was a night to be remembered." 

I inquired particularly about these noises of two men 
who were sitting on the post ofiice piazza. "We still 



Shad Time on the Connecticut 279 

have one once in a while," the older man said. "The 
ground shakes and there's a noise like a cannon going 
off or a rumblin' like thunder. It woke me up once in 
the night and the dishes were rattling on the buttery 
shelves. You remember old Hardy, don't you, Fred?" 

"Yes," the younger man replied, "he gave me a 
horse-whipping one time when I was a boy." 

"Well," the older man resumed, "he tells of being 
at work on the medder one day when the ground shook 
so strong that it brought the cattle down on their knees. 
The noises are made by gas and dead air exploding 
underground. They start a mile and a half from here 
on Cave Hill. Right in the side of that high hill there's 
a cave you can walk into for about forty rods. You 
can keep going until the air gets so stagnant that your 
light goes out. Then it's time for you to start back." 

"We use to have quite a famous drum corps here," 
Fred remarked, "and some one made up a piece of 
poetry about that and the Moodus earthquake. The 
words were: 

'A man from Texas tall and stout 
Stuck up his nose and hollered out, 
"Oh, what is that infernal noise.'*" 
'Twas nothing but the Drum Corps boys.' " 

In the evening when I returned to the riverside village 
the fishermen were bestirring themselves in prepara- 
tion for the night's fishing, but there was much con- 



28o Highways and Byways of New England 

templation and talking in proportion to action and 
accomplishment. The old men were smoking their 
pipes and the young men were puffing cigarets, and all 
were swearing good-naturedly with every breath. They 
piled the nets in the stern of the boats, put in tubs and 
lanterns, rubber boots and extra coats, and then rowed 
their boats one by one leisurely away down the river. 

Harry and his grizzled partner were the last to leave. 
As the former stepped into their craft he said: "We'll 
go out as soon as the clouds git through showin' red. 
The gnats are bad tonight. Confound the little rascals! 
They git into your hair and eyes and ears. The mos- 
quitoes, by gosh! are out too. One is buzzing around 
me now. I'll shoot him on the wing if he don't keep 
away,'* and the old man brought his hands together 
before his face with a sudden slap. "But there's noth- 
ing we have here to compare with the Spanish Flies 
down on the Amazon. Mosquitoes are nowhere. Bite 
— ^Jerusalem! don't say a word; and if you smash 'em 
they raise a blister on you. How plain you c'n hear 
them toads and frogs a-squawkin' in the meadow across 
the river! The frogs are the males, and the toads are 
the females. Well, we'll start now." 

The boat slipped away through the dusk, and when 
I looked down the river the fishermen's lights dotted 
the gloomy water as far as I could see. 

Notes. — One can travel on state macadam all the way down the 
valley from Hartford to Long Island Sound. Perhaps the most 
satisfying way to make the trip is by water in a motor boat. There 



Shad Time on the Connecticut 281 

is much of interest in all the old towns along shore. Hartford is 
especially rich in attractions. The place was settled in 1635, and 
four years later the first colonial constitution was written for this 
Connecticut colony. A tablet marks the site of the Charter Oak in 
the hollow of which the document was hidden in 1687 to save it 
from being seized by the English. Nearly a century later it served 
as the model for the United States Constitution. The Charter Oak 
was thirty-three feet in circumference when it was blown down in 
1856. The tombstone of General Putnam can be seen in the capitol, 
and there hangs in the senate chamber the celebrated Stuart portrait 
of Washington, bought by the state in 1800 for less than eight hun- 
dred dollars. Hartford was for many years the residence of Harriet 
Beecher Stowe and of Mark Twain. 



XV 



GLIMPSES OF LIFE 



IN this chapter I have gathered together certain 
fragments that touch on various picturesque, typical, 
or humorous phases of New England life. Some of 
them are mere anecdotes, and some are comparatively 
long narratives of travel experiences, but none of them 
fit naturally into the other chapters. 

It was midsummer. The day was hot and muggy. 
I was walking among the hills. There were workers in 
the hayfields. Boys were swimming in the ponds and 
in the deep pools of the streams. Most of the wayside 
homes were slicked up for summer boarders, and the 
boarders themselves in their semi-rural, keep-cool 
costumes were lolling about on piazzas and under the 
shade trees and loitering along the highways and row- 
ing on the lakes. 

I stopped at a village store and sat down to rest. 
Presently a young chap came in and bought from the 
clerk fifty cents' worth of sugar, a package of fine-cut 
tobacco, and a little candy. He soon left, but shortly 
afterward returned accompanied by his father, mother, 
and sister. The man spoke angrily to the clerk, saying: 
"I sent here for ten pounds of sugar, and the package 




Ajter dandelion greens 



Glimpse of Life 283 

my boy brought back was so small I weighed it. There 
was only eight pounds." 

"That was fifty cents' worth — just what your son 
asked for," the clerk responded. 

"But I sent money for ten pounds," the man de- 
clared, and then turned to the boy and said, "You 
paid It to him, didn't you, Charlie.^" 

"Ye-es," the youngster mumbled with averted eyes. 

The father again glared at the clerk and said: "You 
got the money. Why didn't you put up the ten pounds 
of sugar. ^" 

"I been workin' in this store three years," was the 
clerk's response, "and I know the difference between 
ten pounds of sugar and fifty cents' worth as well as 
any one, and I tell you I gave your boy just what he 
asked for. He said he wanted fifty cents' worth, and 
a bag of Little Hatchet Tobacco, and the rest in 
chocolates." 

"That's a likely story!" the man exclaimed. 
"Charlie don't use tobacco." 

"I don't care anything about that," was the clerk's 
comment. "He asked for it, and It aint the first 
tobacco he's got here either." 

"Now, Charlie, don't you tell no lie," his sister 
cautioned. She was red-headed and keen-witted. 
"Did you get that tobacco, and are you makin' clgarets 
on the sly.?" 

Charlie's head sank lower, and his hesitating affirma- 
tive was scarcely audible. 



284 Highways and Byways of New England 

"Well, well, we'll see about this," the father said. 
He blew his nose violently and then shuffled out of the 
store with his family following, and I watched them as 
they walked dejectedly up the elm-shadowed street 
toward their home. 

The next day I was in a town which is a favorite 
resort of rich city people and there I hired a liveryman 
to take me out into the surrounding country that I 
might see some of the fine estates of the millionaires 
who have dotted the region with their summer palaces. 
As we passed one of the mansions my companion said: 
"The man who lives there sent a horse to town one day 
to be auctioned. He said the horse was all right, and I 
bought him, but on the way home it ran away with me. 
I drove back to the auction stable and told the auctioneer 
what had happened. 'Of course you can return the 
horse,' he said. *I don't know what the man could 
mean by guaranteeing an animal like that.' 

"The morning afterward the owner met me at the 
post office. 'Well, Dowd,' he said, 'you've ruined your 
reputation as a horseman, going back on a bargain the 
way you did.' 

" 'And you've ruined your reputation as an honest 
man, if you ever had one,' I told him. 

" 'Don't you talk like that to me,' he growled. 

"I went out, and he soon followed and overtook me 
on the sidewalk. 'You mustn't speak to me again in 
a public place the way you did in the post office,' he 
said. 




Getting in hay 



Glimpse of Life 285 

" 'Where do you want me to speak to you like that — 
in some cellar?' I asked. 

" 'You mustn't at all!' he exclaimed. 

" 'Very well,' I said, 'then don't have anything to say 
to me, you lying rascal!' 

" 'What!' he cried, growing red in the face, 'you, a 
common stableman, speaking like that to me, a gentle- 
man! I won't stand it!' 

"He made a rush and struck at me with his fist, 
but I dodged and then got in a blow myself that carried 
him off his feet. However, he was quickly up and 
rushed again to the attack. That time he got a black eye. 

" 'What sort of a country is this,' he shouted, 'that 
allows a stableman to strike a gentleman? Don't you 
do so anymore!' 

" 'Then keep your hand down,' I told him. 

"He saw that he was no match for me, and he turned 
away muttering vengeance. But he never did anything. 
When we meet I look at him squarely, but he turns 
away his face." 

The winter had been an unusually snowy one, and 
the spring was backward. But at length the snow 
melted, the grass thrust up valiant spears of green, the 
tree buds put off their armor, the roads dried, and I 
started on a buckboard journey to the hill country. 
No sooner, however, did I leave the lowlands than I 
began to encounter mud, and as I went higher I found 
shreds of the winter's snowy garments. 



286 Highways and Byways of New England 

The sun had set and the gloom of night was deepen- 
ing when I stopped at a farmhouse to apply for shelter. 
I went to the barn where a stable door was open. 
Within was pitchy darkness, but I could discern the 
sound of milk streaming into a pail and I ventured a 
salutation and got a reply. It was soon arranged that 
I should stay for the night, and when my horse had 
been made comfortable the farmer led the way to the 
house. The family sat down to supper, and after the 
man had asked a long blessing we fell to eating the fried 
ham and potato and hot biscuits with an accompani- 
ment of delicious maple syrup made on the place. 
Finally there was pie. The man polished his plate with 
his knife in the time-honored rustic fashion. When 
his wife spoke of him to any one else she called him 
"he." They both had high-keyed, gentle nasal voices. 
After supper I joined the family and two cats and two 
dogs around the briskly burning fire in the kitchen stove 
and chatted away the evening. 

I was awakened the following morning by a lone 
bird that was carolling near my window. When I was 
again on the road the sun shone clear in the east, but 
the air was keen, the ground was frozen stiff, and the 
snow was hard enough to walk on. Noon came and I 
stopped for dinner at a shabby little home on a moun- 
tain top. It had broken windows stuffed with rags, the 
food that was served was poor, and the milk tasted of 
the barnyard. 

Presently I resumed my journey. The rough descend- 



Glimpse of Life 287 

ing way was crossed by many thank-you-ma'ams and 
in places was so icy that the horse sat down and slid. 
There were drifts too. Some were five or six feet deep 
and I should have been shipwrecked in them if a pas- 
sage had not been opened by shovellers. The natives 
calculated that the last of them would not disappear 
before June. 

In the midst of one of the drifts the road made so 
sharp a turn that I stopped to consider the situation, 
and the horse took advantage of the opportunity to go 
to sleep. Finally I got out, lifted around the back end 
of the vehicle, and went on. Soon I found that the 
trail led me from the drifted highway into a pasture 
waste of soggy moss through which many wheels had 
ploughed a wide track of deep, sticky mud. At times 
I thought I was going to be engulfed, and then I tried 
the mossy borders, but there, though the wheels cut in 
less deeply, the vehicle pitched about so over the hillocks 
that I was glad to get back into the slough. 

Among the places that I passed through on this trip 
were Scrabbletown, Fog Hill, Larrywog, and Podunk. 
As to the last an Indian named Dunk once fell off a 
bridge there in the early days and was drowned. The 
whites spoke of him as "Poor Dunk," and the bridge 
as "Poor Dunk's Bridge," and so the vicinity in time 
came to be called Podunk. Then there was Pilfershire, 
so named because a certain set of fellows there was not 
above stealing, and it was a common saying that every- 
body who passed through lost something. Gradually 



288 Highways and Byways of New England 

the local dwellers reformed, but the name stuck, much 
to their sorrow, until, in desperation, they painted a 
big rock near the highway red and called the village 
Red Rock. 

One morning I started to climb what was known as 
"the Notch Road" that led far up a mountain, but 
rain began to fall, and when I came out on an exposed 
hill the wind made my umbrella flap and snap, and the 
rain swept past in sheets. I hastened the horse, and 
when I arrived at a group of farm buildings I drove 
under a shed. Then I went to the house, but before I 
could rap at the door a kind old lady opened it and said, 
"Come right in out of this dreadful storm." 

She made me very comfortable by the kitchen stove 
and brought a pan of apples from the cellar with which 
to regale me. The room was rather primitive. Its 
floor was much worn, and there were wide cracks be- 
tween the boards. The lower half of the walls was 
sheathed, and the upper half was unpapered plaster, 
a good deal broken. The ceiling was very grimy. 
Hooks along the walls served for hanging up towels, a 
variety of clothing, and a mop. My hostess wore a big 
hood on her head and a cape over her shoulders. Pres- 
ently she sat down in a chair by the stove and churned 
in a tall earthen jar with an up and down paddle. Every 
time the paddle went down bits of cream leaped out 
till the floor around was plentifully decorated. 

After the butter came she went to a window, wiped 
a place on the misted glass, and peered out. "I'm 




On the border of the lake 



Glimpse of Life 289 

expecting my son," she said. "He's a milkman. He 
has to be up at five every morning, and it's a slave's 
life. Some people here on the mounting ship their milk 
to Bostown. Yas, a good many doos that way, but for 
years we've drawed ourn to Millville and peddled it. 
You've been to Millville, haven't ye? It's no great of a 
place, but we have a stiddy market there for milk and 
whatever we raise. Lord! I didn't think this 'ere rain 
would last so long. A branch has blowed off the ellum 
tree yender in the yard. We been having very cold sour 
weather all the spring, and week afore last we had a 
terrible storm of wind and snow. It come on in the night. 
I heared the blinds slamming and got up and fastened 
'em. I was scairt, and the house rocked so I didn't 
care much about goin' to bed ag'in. That there was 
the worst storm I ever see. I won't forgit it very soon." 

Her son came a little later, and we sat down to eat 
dinner. "How'd you make out today.'"' the old woman 
said to the milkman. 

"Well," he responded, "I'd just got to the narrer 
place in the road in the holler beyond the bridge when 
that mare all to once took a notion to cut up a shine. 
I swan! she'll kick the stars right out of the sky. I been 
trainin' the critter ever since she was a colt, but she 
aint never learnt nothin' yet. I had a good holt of the 
lines or she'd have busted up the cart." 

"Just think of that now!" the old woman remarked 
to me. 

"While the mare was rampagin', along come Bill 



290 Highways and Byways of New England 

Case," the son resumed. He'd been to pastur' with his 
cows, and he stopped and said, ' 'Pears to me you'd bet- 
ter git a new horse.' 

" 'That's a good idee,' I told him, 'but supposin' a 
feller ain't got the spondulux to pay for't.^' Let me 
have another of those b'iled potatoes. I'm considera- 
ble hungry. I bruised my foot some, and I guess I'd 
better rub on a little alcohol." 

"I've got a bottle of it somewheres," his mother 
said, "and I'll fetch it and put some in a sasser for you. 
But don't rub on too much or it'll take the hide right 
off." 

After we finished eating, and the bruised foot had 
been attended to, the milkman said to me: "Now I'll 
rig up and go to the barn. I've got a game rooster out 
there I'd like to show you." 

His mother turned to me and observed: "It's curi's 
how much he thinks of that there rooster of hisn. But 
boys all have to have the hen fever just as children all 
have to have croup and measles." 

"That's what's the matter," her son commented. 
"Us young ones are a little bit sp'ilt when it comes to 
chickens and game roosters. But I think there's money 
into the hen business." 

"Before you go out," the old woman said, "I want 
you to fix the bedroom door so it will stay shut, and I 
wish some time you'd clean out the chimley." 

The son got a hammer and gave the door catch a 
few bangs, and then we went to the barn where he 




One of the old folks at home 



Glimpse of Life 291 

showed me his hens. "Some on 'em are about as hand- 
some birds as you could find," he affirmed. "There's 
the rooster I was tellin' you about. He was raised on 
my sister's place, but her and her husband didn't care 
much for so fancy a breed, and they let me have him." 

While I was enjoying the attractions of the barn the 
weather took a turn for the better and the rain ceased 
falling. Yet the valleys continued misty, the mountain 
tops were hidden by clouds, and the wind rattled and 
surged around unceasingly. It was four o'clock in the 
afternoon. I would gladly have lodged with the milk- 
man that night, but could not because all the extra 
bedticks were in the wash. However, he was sure I 
could get kept at the second house up the road toward 
the notch. 

I drove on until I came to the house that had been 
recommended. A man was sawing wood by the road- 
side. He said : " I'd be glad to keep you if I had a place 
for your horse. I'm awfully sorry, but I've got the 
barn floor torn up. There are three brothers who live 
up the road — mighty nice folks too. I know very well 
you can get kept there." 

I went on. At the home of the three brothers two of 
them came out on the piazza in response to my knock. 
But their buildings were full of stock, and they had put 
four cosset sheep in the woodshed because they had no 
other place for them. "There's just one more house 
up the road," they said. "You try there and if they 
say 'No,' come back here and we'll take care of you 



292 Highways and Byways of New England 

somehow even if we have to keep your horse In the 

parlor," 

I wended my way upward and two dogs followed me 
barking savagely until they heard a hound baying on 
the mountain. Then they stopped and gave their 
attention to him. The people at the final house up 
among the fog-veiled heights gave me the shelter I had 
so long sought, and when morning came, breezy and 
sunlit, and I looked out and saw how charming the 
spot was with its wild mountain environment I felt 
sufficiently rewarded for my strenuous experiences of 
the previous day. 

I once had occasion to spend some time in a good- 
sized market-town where I boarded with the Dawsons. 
The family consisted of Mr. Dawson, a frank and 
capable man of middle age, his wife, fat and, as a rule, 
amiable, with a liking for assuming little airs of pro- 
priety, surprise, sorrow, and other emotions, and a son, 
Julian, aged fifteen, who resembled his mother in his 
appearance and characteristics except that he had 
none of her sentimentality. 

Mrs. Dawson was quite religious when she happened 
to think of it. In commenting on the use of tobacco 
she declared that It was bad for the stomach and added 
affectlngly, "We are abusing the gift our Heavenly 
Father has given us." The gift referred to was the 
stomach, not the tobacco. 

She taught in the Baptist Sunday-school, and she 



Glimpse of Life 293 

was cocksure that her particular brand of religion had 
all the right and sense there was. As to the Unitarians 
she said: "They don't have prayer-meetings. Ah! 
they think they can gain heaven without working for 
it, but I don't believe in this lolling into heaven on a 
hammock, and I don't take any stock in their idea that 
we shall all be saved in the end. If that was so what 
is the use of trying to be good when it don't make any 
difference? People ask me if I could be satisfied in the 
next world if my husband shouldn't be saved. 'Per- 
fectly, perfectly!' I tell 'em. I'd know that whatever 
had been done was just. He'd had every opportunity 
here to see the light and be a good Christian, and if he 
hadn't done well it was his own fault." 

One evening we all got ready to go to the church to a 
Harvest Festival. Julian was to go early and act as 
usher, but he was "sassy" to his mother, and his father 
sternly told him he would take that sort of nonsense 
out of him, and he might just sit down and wait for the 
rest of us. He pouted and swaggered, threw off his 
hat, his coat, and his cuffs, flounced into a chair, and 
picked up a book which he pretended to read. When we 
were ready he announced that he was not going, and a 
dispute ensued with his father during which Mrs. 
Dawson preserved the air of a long-suffering parent. 
Julian finally lagged along behind and was marched 
into the family pew. 

After the meeting, as I was walking home, Mrs. 
Dawson asked me if I wore false teeth. I think she 



294 Highways and Byways of New England 

was not much interested to know whether I did or not, 
but was making an opportunity to tell the story of her 
own, which she did at considerable length. Just as 
she concluded she observed a shooting star and said: 
"When I was a little girl I used to believe that if I saw 
a shooting star and made a wish without speaking to 
any one of it afterward that wish would come true. I 
don't know but it's foolish; and yet I sometimes try 
that even now.'* 

On one occasion she overheard Julian remark, 
" 'Taint no use." 

"How you talk!" she exclaimed, much scandalized. 
"There's no such word in the English language as 
'taint." Then addressing me she added, "I do wish 
I could learn my boy to talk as if he'd been to school." 
She turned again to Julian and said, "I want you to go 
to the post ofhce, and don't you make no stop for 
nobody on the way." 

He was often a great trial to her, and so was her 
husband. If she and Mr. Dawson both had a hand in 
doing a thing that went wrong she promptly packed 
all the blame on him, and she often told him that their 
affairs would be in a very bad way if it wasn't for her. 
It was her firm belief that she had a monopoly of all 
the virtues and she could not understand his irritation 
at her attitude of saintly patience toward his failings. 

Once there was a stair carpet to be put down. Mr. 
Dawson spent an hour or two at the job, but when the 
carpet was down his wife found he had stretched it a 



Glimpse of Life 295 

little tighter than before so that on the bottom stair a 
crease showed somewhat out of place. She made a 
series of unpleasant remarks on his stupidity and lacks 
in general, and nothing would do but that carpet must 
be put down anew. So Mr. Dawson took it up and 
started the task again. But this time he would not 
drive a single tack until Mrs. Dawson had indicated 
the place for it. At each step he wanted to have her 
adjust the carpet to suit herself, and she found the 
labor quite wearing. To cap the climax, when they got 
to the bottom, the carpet hung three inches short of 
the floor. Mr. Dawson wouldn't do the work over 
again, and there the carpet hung — a grand object 
lesson. 

A man in a remote country town, attracted by the 
celebrity of William Cullen Bryant, came to see him 
at his summer home in Cummington, Massachusetts. 
After meeting and talking with him his awe gradually 
wore off, and he said, "Why, I don't see that you look 
any different from other men; and yet I s'pose some 
people would give as much to see you as they would 
to see a bear." 

When old Doctor Hillman called on a patient and 
left some medicine he'd say: "If the dose I've pre- 
scribed doesn't have any effect take a double dose. 
Then you'll either be better or worse, or you'll be about 
the same." 



296 Highways and Byways of New England 

"Everybody had a nickname when I went to school. 
There was Codfish, and Boots, and Old Grimes, and we 
called Dave Kingman, whose father was a deacon, 
' Little Deacon.' One of the girls, who afterward became 
a famous writer, we called Tabby. 

"We had a fireplace in the schoolhouse until about 
1870. If the supply of wood give out the boys would go 
into the woodland close by and knock some stumps to 
pieces and bring 'em in. There was considerable com- 
plaint of a poor fire, and one examination day at the 
end of the winter term the boys said they would make 
it hot enough for once. So they filled up the fireplace 
and chimney to the top. A person couldn't stay within 
ten feet of that fire, and we had to keep putting on snow 
around the chimney to prevent the building from burn- 
ing down. 

"I went to school in the Slab City district. There 
was a good-sized brook near the schoolhouse, and we 
skated and slid on it in winter and paddled in it and 
made rafts to float around on In summer, and we were 
always breaking through the ice or tumbling into the 
water. The nearest district to ours was one we called 
'Babylon.' A lot of overgrown fellers went to the 
school there, and they turned out their teacher — picked 
him up and set him and all his traps outdoors. After 
that they come up and offered to turn ourn out. He 
wa'n't good for nothin', but we didn't propose to have 
any outsiders interfering. So we pitched in and give 
those Babylon fellers the worst drubbing they ever got 



Glimpse of Life 297 

and drove 'em way down over a ridge that was known 
as 'the Backbone.' 

"Our teacher was kind of an ugly cud. He had a 
curious way of taking the kinks out of the little runts. 
He'd grab 'em by the collars and crack their heads 
together. How he would yank 'em round! 

"One recess I got Into trouble with Josh Harris. He 
was always forever tryin' to trip up some one, and 
he tried It on me. That kind o' raised my Ebenezer a 
little. We went at each other, and the teacher come to 
the door, and says: *Stop thar, both of ye! Who 
begun this row?' 

" 'Josh did,' says I. 

"But Josh started makin' complaints of me, and the 
teacher says, *Yew two come Into the schoolhouse.' 

"We went In, and he gave us each a switch and told 
us to lick jackets. Josh blinked at me to have me hit 
easy, but I wouldn't. After school I felt the welts on 
his legs, and they stood right up just like a wash- 
board. 

" I shall never forget one thing I heard at that school. 
The teacher asked In the geography lesson, 'What are 
the principal fruits of the West Indies?' 

" 'Pie-apples and bandages,' one of the boys says." 

"We always used to take Harper'' s Weekly. A crazy 
man lived In our family, and he'd read that Harper^s 
Weekly and look at the pictures and seem to get a great 
deal of comfort out of it. But we stopped It because It 



298 Highways and Byways of New England 

began to caricature Charles Sumner. The crazy man 
didn't live long after that." 

"It ain't much trouble for me to take care of my 
family," the hired man said. "I git 'em all under cover 
every time I put on my hat." 

**One day Uncle Quin was going to town and Jerry 
Peters asked him to bring back a bottle of rum for him. 
Uncle Quin, he got the rum, and when he came home 
he set it in his cellar-way right side of a bottle of kero- 
sene. By and by Jerry come after the rum and Uncle 
Quin give him the wrong bottle and Jerry took it home. 
Later Uncle Quin discovered his mistake. He was 
afraid the kerosene would poison any one who drank it, 
and he was scairt most to death. So he hitched up his 
horse and put him right through till he got to Jerry's 
house. Jerry had taken a good horn of the kerosene, 
and he was in bed, but declared he was all right enough. 

" 'Wal, I swear to ye!' Uncle Quin says, much 
relieved, *now, if ye'll only swallow a wick ye'll have a 
lamp all complete.' " 

"Parson Briggs was a little stub of a fellow, but he 
had long legs that opened up like a pair of tongs almost 
to his brain. He's gone to heaven now. A grandson 
of his is in Amherst College. I don't know where he'll 
go to." 

"Harry Taylor has got to be quite a smoker for a 
young fellow. I met him the other evening on the 



Glimpse of Life 299 

road, and he had a pipe in his mouth with a bowl as big 
as a cocoanut. It was so large it hid his face and I 
didn't know what was coming at first. A cloud of 
smoke poured out and streamed away behind, and he 
looked like some sort of steam engine running loose." 

"I think a man ought to marry a woman that is 
cheerful and can talk easy and joke and say pleasant 
things to him. There ain't much fun in coming in after 
a hard day outdoors and meeting a woman with a face 
like a hoe-handle, who goes about her work as if she'd 
lost all her friends." 



npHE following pages contain advertisements of a 
few of the Macmillan books on kindred subjects 



HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS OF THE MISSISSIPPI 

VALLEY 

with Sixty-three Full-Page Illustrations 

"Mr. Johnson has written no book of more interest to Americans than 
this one." — New York Times. 

"From cover to cover the book is both entertaining and instructive." 

— Brooklyn Eagle. 



OTHER VOLUMES IN THE HIGHWAYS 
AND BYWAYS SERIES 

Decorated Cloth, 8vo, $2.00 net; postpaid, $2.20 
The Touring Edition Preparing 

Illustrations by the Author 

HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS OF THE PACIFIC COAST 

With Sixty-three Full-Page Illustrations 

"For the benefit of persons contemplating pleasure tours through the 
region, each chapter is helpful, with suggestions for practical travel." 

— Chicago Evening Post. 

HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS OF THE SOUTH 

With One Hundred and Thirty-two Illustrations 

"Mr. Johnson gives more illuminative descriptions of homely details 
in life than any other modern writer." — Town and Country. 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 



The Touring Edition of 
CLIFTON JOHNSON'S 

BEAUTIFUL BOOKS 

From the Highways and Byways Series 

Decorated Cloth, i2mo, $i.So net; postpaid $1.64 
Illustrated with Photographs by the Author 

HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS OF THE GREAT LAKES 

"Vacation travelers, whose thoughts turn to our Inland seas, will find 
information and inspiration in this volume." — New York World. 

"A real picture of the country covered and its people." — Boston Globe, 



HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS OF THE ROCKY 
MOUNTAINS 

"It is a book that is as interesting as it is valuable, as picturesque as 
it is typical and as pleasurable as it is sincere." — Boston Times. 

"It is a book for those planning pleasure tours and contains many 
valuable suggestions for travelers." — New York Herald. 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 



New Books of Travel, Adventure and Description 



My Life with the Eskimos 

By VILHJALMUR STEFANSSON 

Illustrated with half-tone reproductions of photographs taken by the author 
and others. Decorated cloth, 8vo. Preparing. 

A fascinating book of description and adventure has been 
written by the famous traveler and explorer, who has passed 
years of his life within the Artie Circle. Mr. Stefansson 
has had a vast amount of material upon which to draw, and 
he has made his selection wisely. He has lived with the Es- 
kimos for long periods; he knows their language; he has 
subsisted on their food; he has heard their legends; he has 
seen them in their daily lives as have few explorers. Con- 
sequently his remarks about this primitive and matter-of- 
fact people are shrewd, true, and frequently amusing. The 
experiences and tales which he recounts, mirroring the hard- 
ships and the inspirations of life in a fearful but wonderful 
country, compose a work quite the most absorbing on it that 
has ever been published. 

The Barbary Coast 

By albert EDWARDS 
Author of "Panama," "Comrade Yetta," etc. 

With many illustrations. Decorated cloth, l2mo. Preparing, 

Albert Edward's *' Panama: The Canal, the Country, and 
the People" has gone into many editions and received wide 
and favorable comment. Much may, therefore, be expected 
of this new descriptive volume, in which Mr. Edwards relates 
some of his remarkable and always interesting experiences in 
the states of northern Africa. Mr. Edwards does not write 
with a history or a book at his elbow; what he says does not 
come to the reader from a second-hand knowledge. He has 
been in Africa himself and he writes out of his own life, 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 



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